Linux Powershell Suspicious Child Process
Description
Detects when Powershell (pwsh) spawns a highly abnormal or suspicious child process. Powershell usage on Linux is rare, and leveraging Powershell to launch any of this list of suspicious utilities may indicate malicious behavior.
Query · eql
process where event.type == "start" and event.action == "exec" and process.parent.name == "pwsh" and
process.name like (
"nc", "ncat", "netcat", "netcat.openbsd", "netcat.traditional", "nc.openbsd", "nc.traditional", "socat", "ngrok", "ping",
"python*", "php*", "perl*", "ruby*", "lua*", "openssl", "telnet"
) and
not (
(process.name like "python*" and process.args == "azure.cli") or
process.parent.executable like~ (
"/opt/ansible*/Evaluate-STIG/powershell/pwsh", "/evaluate/Evaluate-STIG/powershell/pwsh",
"/opt/Evaluate-STIG/powershell/pwsh"
) or
process.working_directory like "/opt/azurevstsagent/agent*" or
process.args like "/home/*/.local/bin/az" or
(process.parent.args == "./vmware_ap_vcenter.global.ps1" and process.name == "ping")
)