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Description

This analytic looks for PKILL process execution for possible termination of process. This technique is being used by several Threat actors, adversaries and red teamers to terminate processes in a targeted linux machine. This Hunting detection can be a good pivot to check a possible defense evasion technique or termination of security application in a linux host or wiper like Awfulshred that corrupt all files.

  • Type: Hunting
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2023-02-08
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: 435c6b33-adf9-47fe-be87-8e29fd6654f5

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1562.001 Disable or Modify Tools Defense Evasion
T1562 Impair Defenses Defense Evasion
Kill Chain Phase
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • DE.CM
CIS20
  • CIS 3
  • CIS 5
  • CIS 16
CVE 


1
2
3
4
5



| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process_name IN ( "pgrep", "pkill") Processes.process = "*pkill *" by Processes.dest Processes.user Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.parent_process_id Processes.process_guid 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `linux_impair_defenses_process_kill_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: linux_impair_defenses_process_kill_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Required fields

List of fields required to use this analytic.

  • _time
  • Processes.dest
  • Processes.user
  • Processes.parent_process_name
  • Processes.process_name
  • Processes.process
  • Processes.process_id
  • Processes.parent_process_id

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the process name, parent process, and command-line executions from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you can use the Add-on for Linux Sysmon from Splunkbase.

Known False Positives

network admin can terminate a process using this linux command. Filter is needed.

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
9.0 30 30 a $process_name$ tries to execute pkill commandline to terminate process in $dest$

:information_source: The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

Reference

Test Dataset

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

source | version: 1