Malicious Cobalt Strike Default Named Pipe Creation (via pipe_created)

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1055Process Injection
Defense Evasion
- T1055Process Injection
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of named pipes matching Cobalt Strike default and post-exploitation patterns such as msagent_, postex_ and status_ pipes used for beacon inter-process communication and privilege escalation. Cobalt Strike is among the most prevalent adversary tools in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report, used across ransomware and espionage intrusions for command and control. Detecting its characteristic named pipes surfaces beacon activity that often evades network-based controls.

Reporting behind it

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Malicious Cobalt Strike Default Named Pipe Creation (via pipe_created)

Pivot detection · T1055 · 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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