Command and Scripting Interpreter: Hypervisor CLI T1059.012

Tactic: Execution

Adversaries may abuse hypervisor command line interpreters (CLIs) to execute malicious commands. Hypervisor CLIs typically enable a wide variety of functionality for managing both the hypervisor itself and the guest virtual machines it hosts.

Events covered

1 catalog event is tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

ProviderEventTitle
Sysmon-for-LinuxEvent ID 1Process Create

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 9 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 (2 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
CommandLine9contains 9, ends_with 1 list, get, set, vm process, permission
Image9ends_with 9/esxcli

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. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
Imageends_with
/esxcli
99
CommandLinecontains
get
44
CommandLinecontains
list
44
CommandLinecontains
system
37
CommandLinecontains
set
22
CommandLinecontains
vm process
22
CommandLinecontains
permission
1
CommandLinecontains
account
1
CommandLinecontains
add
112
CommandLinecontains
admin
14
CommandLinecontains
config
116
CommandLinecontains
kill
1
CommandLinecontains
network
13
CommandLinecontains
storage
12
CommandLinecontains
syslog
1
CommandLinecontains
system
1
CommandLinecontains
vsan
1
CommandLineends_with
list
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.

Platform (all)
Domain (all)

Sigma 9 rules