ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Inter-Process Communication T1559

Adversaries may abuse inter-process communication (IPC) mechanisms for local code or command execution. IPC is typically used by processes to share data, communicate with each other, or synchronize execution. IPC is also commonly used to avoid situations such as deadlocks, which occurs when processes are stuck in a cyclic waiting pattern.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon17PipeEvent (Pipe Created)
Sysmon18PipeEvent (Pipe Connected)
Defender-DeviceEvents9007006Named pipe event

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 6 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized 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 (5 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
EventID5eq 3, in 217, 18
tool4is_not_null 4
PipeName2regex_match 1, match 1, eq 1[a-fA-F0-9]{2,10}$, CobaltStrikeMallable, CobaltStrikeDefaults, "*Anonymous Pipe*"
ActionType1eq 1NamedPipeEvent
EventType1in 1"CreatePipe", "ConnectPipe"

Top indicator values (18 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.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
EventIDeq1733
EventIDeq1833
EventIDin1726
EventIDin1826
PipeNameregex_match\\pipe\\[0-9a-f]{8}1
PipeNameregex_match\\PSHost\.\d+\.1
PipeNamematchCobaltStrikeMallable1
PipeNameregex_match\\cubeb-pipe-1
PipeNameregex_match[a-fA-F0-9]{2,10}$1
PipeNamematchCobaltStrikeDefaults1
PipeNameregex_match\\crashpad_1
PipeNameregex_match\\(edge|chrome)\.sync\.\d+\.\d+\.1
PipeNameregex_match\\pipe\\[0-9a-f]{7,10}1
PipeNameregex_match\\mojo\.\d+\.\d+\.1
ActionTypeeqNamedPipeEvent1
EventTypein"ConnectPipe"14
EventTypein"CreatePipe"14
PipeNameeq"*Anonymous Pipe*"1

Common exclusions (18 distinct)

Field/operator/value combinations that rules under this technique routinely exclude (top-level not() clauses). These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
process_namein"*:\\Windows\\System32\\svchost.exe"4
process_namein"*\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft*"4
process_namein"*:\\Program Files\\Microsoft*"4
process_namein"*:\\Program Files \(x86\)\\Microsoft*"4
process_namein"*:\\Program Files \(x86\)\\Adobe*"4
process_namein"*:\\Windows\\system32\\SearchIndexer.exe"4
process_namein"*:\\Windows\\SystemApps\\Microsoft*"4
process_namein"*:\\Program Files \(x86\)\\Google*"4
process_namein"*:\\Program Files\\Adobe*"4
process_namein"*\\AppData\\Local\\Google*"4
process_namein"*\\AppData\\Local\\Kingsoft\\*"4
process_namein"*\\Amazon\\SSM\\Instance*"4
process_namein"*:\\Program Files\\Google*"4
process_namein"System"4
Imagein"C:\\Windows\\system32\\*"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.

Splunk 5 rules

Kusto Query Language 1 rule