Malicious Bulk Data Exfiltration via Rclone (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Exfiltration

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
- T1048Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
- T1567.002Exfiltration to Cloud Storage
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects rclone being run with copy, sync or move operations to a cloud remote, the staging-and-exfiltration tool ransomware crews use to bulk-transfer stolen data before encryption. Data exfiltration over cloud storage is documented in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report as a hallmark of double-extortion intrusions. Detecting rclone transfer commands surfaces exfiltration during the critical window before impact.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1567.002 — drag to rearrange

Data Exfiltration to WebDAV Share via curl Upload

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Suspicious Data Exfiltration via Rclone Cloud Transfer (via process_creation)

Suspicious Data Exfiltration to Dropbox via curl (via process_creation)

Suspicious Lambda Function Creation Across Regions in AWS Extortion Operation

Malicious Data Exfiltration via Renamed Rclone Using Masqueraded Configuration

Suspicious Cloud Exfiltration via Rclone

Suspicious Rclone Cloud Sync Execution for Data Exfiltration via Command Line

Suspicious Data Exfiltration via MEGAsync (via process_creation)

Malicious Bulk Data Exfiltration via Rclone (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1567.002 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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