Detection rules › Splunk
Web Servers Executing Suspicious Processes
The following analytic detects the execution of suspicious processes on systems identified as web servers. It leverages the Splunk data model "Endpoint.Processes" to search for specific process names such as "whoami", "ping", "iptables", "wget", "service", and "curl". This activity is significant because these processes are often used by attackers for reconnaissance, persistence, or data exfiltration. If confirmed malicious, this could lead to data theft, deployment of additional malware, or even ransomware attacks. Immediate investigation is required to determine the legitimacy of the activity and mitigate potential threats.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Discovery | T1082 System Information Discovery |
Event coverage
| Provider | Event ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | 1 | Process creation |
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: tstats
tstats WHERE (Processes.process="*curl*" OR Processes.process="*iptables*" OR Processes.process="*ping*" OR Processes.process="*service*" OR Processes.process="*wget*" OR Processes.process="*whoami*") Processes.dest_category="web_server" BY Processes.action, Processes.dest, Processes.original_file_name, Processes.parent_process, Processes.parent_process_exec, Processes.parent_process_guid, Processes.parent_process_id, Processes.parent_process_name, Processes.parent_process_path, Processes.process, Processes.process_exec, Processes.process_guid, Processes.process_hash, Processes.process_id, Processes.process_integrity_level, Processes.process_name, Processes.process_path, Processes.user, Processes.user_id, Processes.vendor_product
Stage 2: search
search
Stage 3: search
search
Stage 4: search
search
Stage 5: search
search `macro`
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 |
|---|---|---|
Processes.dest_category | eq |
|
Processes.process | eq |
|