Remote Service Session Hijacking T1563
Tactic: Lateral Movement
Adversaries may take control of preexisting sessions with remote services to move laterally in an environment. Users may use valid credentials to log into a service specifically designed to accept remote connections, such as telnet, SSH, and RDP. When a user logs into a service, a session will be established that will allow them to maintain a continuous interaction with that service.
Events covered
10 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | Event ID 12 | RegistryEvent (Object create and delete) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 14 | RegistryEvent (Key and Value Rename) |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4697 | A service was installed in the system. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4778 | A session was reconnected to a Window Station. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4779 | A session was disconnected from a Window Station. |
| TerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager | Event ID 1149 | Remote Desktop Services: User authentication succeeded. |
| Service-Control-Manager | Event ID 7045 | A service was installed in the system. |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 18 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 (29 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 (134 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 (121 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 6 rules
- macOS Remote Execution Tools
- macOS Screen Sharing Session
- Potential MSTSC Shadowing Activity
- RDP session hijack via service creation abuse
- RDP session hijack via TSCON abuse command
- Suspicious RDP Redirect Using TSCON
Elastic 9 rules
- Network Connection Initiated by Suspicious SSHD Child Process
- Potential Execution via SSH Backdoor
- Potential Remote Desktop Shadowing Activity
- Potential THC Tool Downloaded
- Renaming of OpenSSH Binaries
- SSH Authorized Key File Activity Detected via Defend for Containers
- SSH Authorized Keys File Activity
- SSH Key Generated via ssh-keygen
- Unusual SSHD Child Process