Trickbot Named Pipe

Status: production
Severity: medium
Group by: PipeName, dest, dvc, process_guid, process_id, process_name, signature, signature_id, user_id, vendor_product
Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
Source: github.com/splunk/security_content

The following analytic detects the creation or connection to a named pipe associated with Trickbot malware. It leverages Sysmon EventCodes 17 and 18 to identify named pipes with the pattern "\pipe\*lacesomepipe". This activity is significant as Trickbot uses named pipes for communication with its command and control (C2) servers, facilitating data exfiltration and command execution. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could allow attackers to maintain persistence, execute arbitrary commands, and exfiltrate sensitive information from the compromised system.

Known false positives

No false positives have been identified at this time.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Privilege Escalation	`T1055` Process Injection
Stealth	`T1055` Process Injection

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Sysmon	Event ID 17: PipeEvent (Pipe Created)
Sysmon	Event ID 18: PipeEvent (Pipe Connected)

Rule body

name: Trickbot Named Pipe
id: 1804b0a4-a682-11eb-8f68-acde48001122
version: 11
creation_date: '2021-04-26'
modification_date: '2026-05-13'
author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
status: production
type: TTP
description: The following analytic detects the creation or connection to a named pipe associated with Trickbot malware. It leverages Sysmon EventCodes 17 and 18 to identify named pipes with the pattern "\\pipe\\*lacesomepipe". This activity is significant as Trickbot uses named pipes for communication with its command and control (C2) servers, facilitating data exfiltration and command execution. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could allow attackers to maintain persistence, execute arbitrary commands, and exfiltrate sensitive information from the compromised system.
data_source:
    - Sysmon EventID 17
    - Sysmon EventID 18
search: '`sysmon` EventCode IN (17,18) PipeName="\\pipe\\*lacesomepipe" | stats  min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime count by dest dvc pipe_name process_exec process_guid process_id process_name process_path signature signature_id user_id vendor_product Image PipeName | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` | `trickbot_named_pipe_filter`'
how_to_implement: To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the process name and pipename from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you must have at least version 6.0.4 of the Sysmon TA. .
known_false_positives: No false positives have been identified at this time.
references:
    - https://labs.vipre.com/trickbot-and-its-modules/
    - https://whitehat.eu/incident-response-case-study-featuring-ryuk-and-trickbot-part-2/
finding:
    title: Possible Trickbot namedpipe created on $dest$ by $process_name$
    entity:
        field: dest
        type: system
        score: 50
threat_objects:
    - field: process_name
      type: process_name
analytic_story:
    - Trickbot
    - Hellcat Ransomware
asset_type: Endpoint
mitre_attack_id:
    - T1055
product:
    - Splunk Enterprise
    - Splunk Enterprise Security
    - Splunk Cloud
category: endpoint
security_domain: endpoint

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `search`

`sysmon` EventCode IN (17,18) PipeName="\\pipe\\*lacesomepipe"

Stage 2: `stats`

| stats  min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime count by dest dvc pipe_name process_exec process_guid process_id process_name process_path signature signature_id user_id vendor_product Image PipeName

Stage 3: `search`

| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`

Stage 4: `search`

| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`

Stage 5: `search`

| `trickbot_named_pipe_filter`

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`EventCode`	in	`17` corpus 5 (splunk 4, elastic 1) `18` corpus 6 (splunk 4, chronicle 1, kusto 1)	`field:"EventID" kind:in`
`PipeName`	eq	`"\\pipe\\*lacesomepipe"`	`field:"PipeName" kind:eq`