Malicious Cobalt Strike Default Named Pipe Activity

ATT&CK techniques

Lateral Movement → C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1021.002SMB/Windows Admin Shares
Collection
C2
- T1071.001Web Protocols
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of named pipes matching Cobalt Strike default post exploitation and agent conventions which the BlackSuit intrusion relied on for SMB beacon communication and this matters because these pipe name patterns are strongly associated with Cobalt Strike beacons performing lateral tasking and are a high value signal of active post exploitation.

Reporting behind it

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Malicious Cobalt Strike Default Named Pipe Activity

Pivot detection · T1071.001 · 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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