Cobalt Strike Command and Control Beacon

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Cobalt Strike is a threat emulation platform commonly modified and used by adversaries to conduct network attack and exploitation campaigns. This rule detects a network activity algorithm leveraged by Cobalt Strike implant beacons for command and control.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • packetbeat-*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-6m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Network
  • Threat Detection
  • Command and Control

Version: 1

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Potential false positives

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This rule should be tailored to either exclude systems, as sources or destinations, in which this behavior is expected.

Investigation guide

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This activity has been observed in FIN7 campaigns.

Rule query

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event.category:(network OR network_traffic) AND type:(tls OR http) AND
network.transport:tcp AND
destination.domain:/[a-z]{3}.stage.[0-9]{8}\..*/

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM