Malicious Chisel Reverse Tunnel Execution for Protocol Tunneling

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-05
Updated
2026-10-05

ATT&CK techniques

C2
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects execution of the Chisel tunneling tool either by binary name or by a client command establishing a reverse tunnel, the protocol tunneling method used by Scattered Spider for covert connectivity and persistence. Chisel builds an encrypted tunnel that lets adversaries pivot through the network and evade egress controls. The tool has no legitimate enterprise use in most environments.

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Suspicious SCATTERED SPIDER Chisel Tunnel to Cloudflare Quick Tunnel (via process_creation)
Suspicious Cloudflared Tunnel Execution for Command and Control by Kraken Ransomware
Suspicious OpenSSH Reverse Tunnel Over HTTPS Port (Chaos Ransomware)
Possible Plink Reverse Tunnel Command Line Execution
Chisel Reverse Tunnel Tool Execution from Temporary Directory
Malicious Chisel Reverse Tunnel Execution for Protocol Tunneling
Pivot detection · T1572 · 9 related

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