Virtual Machine Discovery T1673

Tactic: Discovery

An adversary may attempt to enumerate running virtual machines (VMs) after gaining access to a host or hypervisor. For example, adversaries may enumerate a list of VMs on an ESXi hypervisor using a Hypervisor CLI such as `esxcli` or `vim-cmd` (e.g. `esxcli vm process list or vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms`). Adversaries may also directly leverage a graphical user interface, such as VMware vCenter, in order to view virtual machines on a host.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 4 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 (8 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
aws::userAgent2eq 1, starts_with 1(azure|sharp|blood)(hound)/., Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)...
data_stream.dataset2eq 1, in 1azure.activitylogs, azure.auditlogs, azure.graphactivitylogs, azure.signinlogs, o365.audit
sourcetype2in 2vmw-syslog, vmware:esxlog*
Message1contains 1esxcli vm process, list
command1contains 1, is_not_null 1, starts_with 1--format-param, awk, esxcli
user_agent.name1eq 1Electron
user_agent.os.name1eq 1Windows
user_agent.version1eq 18.5.1

Top indicator values (22 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
sourcetypein
vmw-syslog
223
sourcetypein
vmware:esxlog*
223
Messagecontains
esxcli vm process
1
Messagecontains
list
1
aws::userAgenteq
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like...
1
aws::userAgentstarts_with
(azure|sharp|blood)(hound)/.
1
commandcontains
--format-param
1
commandcontains
awk
1
commandcontains
esxcli
1
commandcontains
esxcli vm process kill
1
commandcontains
vm process list
1
commandstarts_with
pkill -9 vmx-
1
data_stream.dataseteq
azure.activitylogs
134
data_stream.dataseteq
azure.auditlogs
120
data_stream.dataseteq
azure.graphactivitylogs
15
data_stream.dataseteq
azure.signinlogs
130
data_stream.dataseteq
o365.audit
145
data_stream.datasetin
azure.signinlogs
15
data_stream.datasetin
o365.audit
13
user_agent.nameeq
Electron
1
user_agent.os.nameeq
Windows
1
user_agent.versioneq
8.5.1
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)

Elastic 2 rules

Splunk 2 rules