Potential Cookies Theft via Browser Debugging

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Identifies the execution of a Chromium based browser with the debugging process argument, which may indicate an attempt to steal authentication cookies. An adversary may steal web application or service session cookies and use them to gain access web applications or Internet services as an authenticated user without needing credentials.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 33

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Linux
  • Windows
  • macOS
  • Threat Detection
  • Credential Access

Version: 4 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.4.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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Developers performing browsers plugin or extension debugging.

Investigation guide

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Rule query

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process where event.type in ("start", "process_started", "info") and
process.name in ( "Microsoft Edge",
"chrome.exe", "Google Chrome", "google-
chrome-stable", "google-chrome-beta",
"google-chrome", "msedge.exe") and process.args : ("--
remote-debugging-port=*", "--remote-debugging-
targets=*", "--remote-debugging-pipe=*") and
process.args : "--user-data-dir=*" and not process.args:"--remote-
debugging-port=0"

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 4 (8.4.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    process where event.type in ("start", "process_started", "info") and
    process.name in ( "Microsoft Edge",
    "chrome.exe", "Google Chrome", "google-
    chrome-stable", "google-chrome-beta",
    "google-chrome", "msedge.exe") and process.args : ("--
    remote-debugging-port=*", "--remote-debugging-
    targets=*", "--remote-debugging-pipe=*") and
    process.args : "--user-data-dir=*" and not process.args:"--remote-
    debugging-port=0"
Version 2 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only