Process Discovery T1057
Tactic: Discovery
Adversaries may attempt to get information about running processes on a system. Information obtained could be used to gain an understanding of common software/applications running on systems within the network. Administrator or otherwise elevated access may provide better process details. Adversaries may use the information from Process Discovery during automated discovery to shape follow-on behaviors, including whether or not the adversary fully infects the target and/or attempts specific actions.
Events covered
5 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Linux-Auditd | Event ID 1300 | SYSCALL |
| PowerShell | Event ID 4104 | Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal). |
| Sysmon-for-Linux | Event ID 1 | Process Create |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 33 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 (30 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.
Top indicator values (414 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.
Exclusions (202 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. 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. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
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 7 rules
- Cisco Discovery
- HackTool - PCHunter Execution
- Process Discovery
- Recon Command Output Piped To Findstr.EXE
- Suspicious Process Discovery With Get-Process
- Suspicious Tasklist Discovery Command
- System Info Discovery via Sysinfo Syscall
Elastic 18 rules
- Deprecated - PowerShell Script with Discovery Capabilities
- Enumeration Command Spawned via WMIPrvSE
- Potential Linux Credential Dumping via Proc Filesystem
- Potential Linux Hack Tool Launched
- Potential Memory Seeking Activity
- Process Capability Enumeration
- Process Discovery Using Built-in Tools
- Process Discovery via Built-In Applications
- Suspicious /proc/maps Discovery
- Suspicious Dynamic Linker Discovery via od
- Suspicious JetBrains TeamCity Child Process
- Suspicious Memory grep Activity
- Suspicious MS Office Child Process
- Suspicious PDF Reader Child Process
- Suspicious Proc Pseudo File System Enumeration
- Suspicious System Commands Executed by Previously Unknown Executable
- System Service Discovery through built-in Windows Utilities
- Unusual Linux Process Discovery Activity
Splunk 6 rules
- Common Recon Commands in Short Burst (Sysmon)
- Common Recon Commands in Short Burst (Windows Event Log)
- Common Reconnaissance Commands (PowerShell)
- Common Reconnaissance Commands (Sysmon)
- Common Reconnaissance Commands (Windows Event Log)
- Windows Process Commandline Discovery