Techniques
Sample rules
Windows SSH Proxy Command
- source: splunk
- technicques:
- T1572
- T1059.001
- T1105
Description
This detection identifies potential abuse of SSH ProxyCommand by monitoring for suspicious process execution patterns. Specifically, it looks for instances where ssh.exe (as a parent process) containing “ProxyCommand” in its arguments spawns potentially malicious child processes like mshta, powershell, wscript, or cscript, or processes containing “http” in their command line. This technique can be used by attackers to execute arbitrary commands through SSH proxy configurations, potentially enabling command & control activities or remote code execution. The detection focuses on commonly abused Windows scripting engines and web requests that may indicate malicious activity when spawned through SSH proxy commands.
Detection logic
| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_path="*\\ssh.exe" Processes.parent_process IN ("*ProxyCommand*") Processes.process IN ("*mshta*","*powershell*","*http*","*wscript*","*cscript*") by Processes.action Processes.dest
Processes.original_file_name Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_exec
Processes.parent_process_guid Processes.parent_process_id Processes.parent_process_name
Processes.parent_process_path Processes.process Processes.process_exec Processes.process_guid
Processes.process_hash Processes.process_id Processes.process_integrity_level Processes.process_name
Processes.process_path Processes.user Processes.user_id Processes.vendor_product
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `windows_ssh_proxy_command_filter`