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Elastic Agent Service Terminated

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Identifies the Elastic endpoint agent has stopped and is no longer running on the host. Adversaries may attempt to disable security monitoring tools in an attempt to evade detection or prevention capabilities during an intrusion. This may also indicate an issue with the agent itself and should be addressed to ensure defensive measures are back in a stable state.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-9m (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/common-options.html#date-math[Date Math format], see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References: None

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Linux
  • Windows
  • macOS
  • Threat Detection
  • Defense Evasion

Version: 101

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

Rule query

process where
/* net, sc or wmic stopping or deleting Elastic Agent on Windows */
(event.type == "start" and
  process.name : ("net.exe", "sc.exe", "wmic.exe","powershell.exe","taskkill.exe","PsKill.exe","ProcessHacker.exe") and
  process.args : ("stopservice","uninstall", "stop", "disabled","Stop-Process","terminate","suspend") and
  process.args : ("elasticendpoint", "Elastic Agent","elastic-agent","elastic-endpoint"))
or
/* service or systemctl used to stop Elastic Agent on Linux */
(event.type == "end" and
  (process.name : ("systemctl", "service") and
    process.args : "elastic-agent" and
    process.args : "stop")
  or
  /* Unload Elastic Agent extension on MacOS */
  (process.name : "kextunload" and
    process.args : "com.apple.iokit.EndpointSecurity" and
    event.action : "end"))

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM