Create or Modify System Process: Systemd Service T1543.002

Adversaries may create or modify systemd services to repeatedly execute malicious payloads as part of persistence. Systemd is a system and service manager commonly used for managing background daemon processes (also known as services) and other system resources. Systemd is the default initialization (init) system on many Linux distributions replacing legacy init systems, including SysVinit and Upstart, while remaining backwards compatible.

Events covered

3 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 2 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.

Fields filtered most (4 distinct)

The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.

FieldRulesHowSample values
Image2contains 2, ends_with 1/python3, /curl, /tar
CommandLine1contains 1--user, exec(base64.b64decode('aw1wb3j0, ki2nf9tq1jjufqgpsaiyv
ParentImage1contains 1/python3
TargetFilename1ends_with 1/.config/sysmon/sysmon.py, /.config/systemd/user/sysmon.service

Top indicator values (16 distinct)

Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
Imagecontains
/python3
22
CommandLinecontains
--user
1
CommandLinecontains
exec(base64.b64decode('aw1wb3j0
1
CommandLinecontains
ki2nf9tq1jjufqgpsaiyv
1
CommandLinecontains
models.litellm.cloud
1
CommandLinecontains
payload.enc
1
CommandLinecontains
session.key.enc
1
CommandLinecontains
sysmon
13
CommandLinecontains
systemctl
1
CommandLinecontains
tpcp.tar.gz
1
CommandLinecontains
x-filename: tpcp.tar.gz
1
Imageends_with
/curl
19
Imageends_with
/tar
1
ParentImagecontains
/python3
1
TargetFilenameends_with
/.config/sysmon/sysmon.py
1
TargetFilenameends_with
/.config/systemd/user/sysmon.service
1

Rules under this technique

Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.

Sigma 2 rules