Detection rules › Sigma
Potentially Suspicious Usage Of Qemu
Detects potentially suspicious execution of the Qemu utility in a Windows environment. Threat actors have leveraged this utility and this technique for achieving network access as reported by Kaspersky.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Command & Control | T1090 Proxy, T1572 Protocol Tunneling |
Event coverage
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
Rule body yaml
title: Potentially Suspicious Usage Of Qemu
id: 5fc297ae-25b6-488a-8f25-cc12ac29b744
status: test
description: |
Detects potentially suspicious execution of the Qemu utility in a Windows environment.
Threat actors have leveraged this utility and this technique for achieving network access as reported by Kaspersky.
references:
- https://securelist.com/network-tunneling-with-qemu/111803/
- https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/invocation.html#hxtool-5
author: Muhammad Faisal (@faisalusuf), Hunter Juhan (@threatHNTR)
date: 2024-06-03
tags:
- attack.command-and-control
- attack.t1090
- attack.t1572
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection:
CommandLine|contains:
- '-m 1M' # VM with just 1MB of ram is insufficient this is a suspicious flag
- '-m 2M'
- '-m 3M'
CommandLine|contains|all:
- 'restrict=off'
- '-netdev '
- 'connect='
- '-nographic' # This is also a key detection no one invoke without UI from console usually its a flag.
filter_main_normal_usecase:
CommandLine|contains:
- ' -cdrom ' # Normal usage cases
- ' type=virt '
- ' -blockdev '
condition: selection and not 1 of filter_main_*
falsepositives:
- Unknown
level: medium
Stages and Predicates
Stage 0: condition
selection and not 1 of filter_main_*Stage 1: selection
selection:
CommandLine|contains:
- '-m 1M'
- '-m 2M'
- '-m 3M'
CommandLine|contains|all:
- 'restrict=off'
- '-netdev '
- 'connect='
- '-nographic'
Stage 2: not filter_main_normal_usecase
filter_main_normal_usecase:
CommandLine|contains:
- ' -cdrom '
- ' type=virt '
- ' -blockdev '
Exclusions
Top-level NOT(...) conjuncts: predicates this rule actively suppresses.
| Field | Kind | Excluded values |
|---|---|---|
CommandLine | match | -blockdev |
CommandLine | match | -cdrom |
CommandLine | match | type=virt |
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.
| Field | Kind | Values |
|---|---|---|
CommandLine | match |
|