Techniques
Sample rules
Web Servers Executing Suspicious Processes
- source: splunk
- technicques:
- T1082
Description
The following analytic detects suspicious processes on systems labeled as web servers. This detection is made by a Splunk query that searches for specific process names that might indicate malicious activity. These suspicious processes include “whoami”, “ping”, “iptables”, “wget”, “service”, and “curl”. Uses the Splunk data model “Endpoint.Processes” and filters the results to only include systems categorized as web servers. This detection is important because it indicates unauthorized or malicious activity on web servers since these processes are commonly used by attackers to perform reconnaissance, establish persistence, or exfiltrate data from compromised systems. The impact of such an attack can be significant, ranging from data theft to the deployment of additional malicious payloads, potentially leading to ransomware or other damaging outcomes. False positives might occur since the legitimate use of these processes on web servers can trigger the analytic. Next steps include triaging and investigating to determine the legitimacy of the activity. Also, review the source and command of the suspicious process. You must also examine any relevant on-disk artifacts and look for concurrent processes to identify the source of the attack.
Detection logic
| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.dest_category="web_server" AND (Processes.process="*whoami*" OR Processes.process="*ping*" OR Processes.process="*iptables*" OR Processes.process="*wget*" OR Processes.process="*service*" OR Processes.process="*curl*") by Processes.process Processes.process_name, Processes.dest Processes.user
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `web_servers_executing_suspicious_processes_filter`