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Detection rules › Sigma

Suspicious Plink Port Forwarding

Status
test
Severity
high
Log source
product windows, category process_creation
Author
Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)
Source
github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Detects suspicious Plink tunnel port forwarding to a local port

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Lateral MovementT1021.001 Remote Services: Remote Desktop Protocol
Command & ControlT1572 Protocol Tunneling

Event coverage

ProviderEventTitle
SysmonEvent ID 1Process creation

Rule body yaml

title: Suspicious Plink Port Forwarding
id: 48a61b29-389f-4032-b317-b30de6b95314
status: test
description: Detects suspicious Plink tunnel port forwarding to a local port
references:
    - https://www.real-sec.com/2019/04/bypassing-network-restrictions-through-rdp-tunneling/
    - https://medium.com/@informationsecurity/remote-ssh-tunneling-with-plink-exe-7831072b3d7d
author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)
date: 2021-01-19
modified: 2022-10-09
tags:
    - attack.command-and-control
    - attack.t1572
    - attack.lateral-movement
    - attack.t1021.001
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Description: 'Command-line SSH, Telnet, and Rlogin client'
        CommandLine|contains: ' -R '
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Administrative activity using a remote port forwarding to a local port
level: high

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: condition

selection

Stage 1: selection

selection:
    Description: 'Command-line SSH, Telnet, and Rlogin client'
    CommandLine|contains: ' -R '

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

FieldKindValues
CommandLinematch
  • -R corpus 10 (sigma 10)
Descriptioneq
  • Command-line SSH, Telnet, and Rlogin client