the idea of using named pipes with cobalt strike is to blend in. therefore, some of the named pipes identified and added may cause false positives. filter by process name or pipe name to reduce false positives.

Techniques

T1055

Sample rules

Cobalt Strike Named Pipes

source: splunk
technicques:
- T1055

Description

The following analytic detects the use of default or publicly known named pipes associated with Cobalt Strike. It leverages Sysmon EventID 17 and 18 to identify specific named pipes commonly used by Cobalt Strike’s Artifact Kit and Malleable C2 Profiles. This activity is significant because Cobalt Strike is a popular tool for adversaries to conduct post-exploitation tasks, and identifying its named pipes can reveal potential malicious activity. If confirmed malicious, this could indicate an active Cobalt Strike beacon, leading to unauthorized access, data exfiltration, or further lateral movement within the network.

Detection logic

`sysmon` EventID=17 OR EventID=18 PipeName IN (\\msagent_*, \\DserNamePipe*, \\srvsvc_*, \\postex_*, \\status_*, \\MSSE-*, \\spoolss_*, \\win_svc*, \\ntsvcs*, \\winsock*, \\UIA_PIPE*)  
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by dest, process_name, process_id process_path, PipeName 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `cobalt_strike_named_pipes_filter`