Installation of WSL Kali-Linux

Severity: high
Author: Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)
Source: upstream

Detects installation of Kali Linux distribution through Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Attackers may use Kali Linux WSL to leverage its penetration testing tools and capabilities for malicious purposes.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Execution	`T1059` Command and Scripting Interpreter

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	1	Process creation

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `all of selection_wsl_img`

or:
Image|endswith: '\wsl.exe'
OriginalFileName: wsl

Stage 2: `all of selection_wsl_install`

or:
CommandLine|contains: ' --install '
CommandLine|contains: ' -i '

Stage 3: `all of selection_wsl_kali`

CommandLine|contains: kali

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

Field	Kind	Values
`CommandLine`	match	`--install` corpus 2 (sigma 2) `-i` corpus 3 (sigma 3) `kali`
`Image`	ends_with	`\wsl.exe` corpus 8 (sigma 8)
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`wsl`