Potential Remote Desktop Tunneling Detected

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Identifies potential use of an SSH utility to establish RDP over a reverse SSH Tunnel. This can be used by attackers to enable routing of network packets that would otherwise not reach their intended destination.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • logs-endpoint.events.*
  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-windows.*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Command and Control

Version: 4 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.16.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and /* RDP
port and usual SSH tunneling related switches in command line */
process.args : "*:3389" and process.args : ("-L", "-P", "-R", "-pw",
"-ssh")

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 4 (7.16.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    process where event.type in ("start", "process_started", "info") and
    /* RDP port and usual SSH tunneling related switches in commandline */
    wildcard(process.args, "*:3389") and wildcard(process.args,"-L", "-P",
    "-R", "-pw", "-ssh")
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    process where event.type in ("start", "process_started", "info") and
    /* RDP port and usual SSH tunneling related switches in commandline */
    wildcard(process.args, "*:3389") and wildcard(process.args,"-L", "-P",
    "-R", "-pw", "-ssh")