Malicious Data Exfiltration via Renamed Rclone Using Masqueraded Configuration

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-16
Updated
2026-10-16

ATT&CK techniques

Exfiltration
  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. C2

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects execution referencing a Rclone configuration file masquerading as a Windows host process file which Conti operators use to exfiltrate data to cloud storage. Observed in NCC Group research on Conti operations after the leaks using a renamed Rclone binary with a svchost.conf configuration. Cloud exfiltration via renamed Rclone is a common ransomware pre-encryption step.

Related detections9 linkedT1567.002 — drag to rearrange
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 Data Exfiltration via MinIO Client from Windows Temp
Suspicious Data Exfiltration to Backblaze B2 via rclone (via process_creation)
Suspicious Rclone Exfiltration via Masqueraded svchost Process Creation
Malicious Snowflake Bulk Data Exfiltration via External Stage COPY INTO (via cloud)
Possible C2 via Google Sheets API Using Formula Render Option by GRIDTIDE
Suspicious Rclone Data Transfer to Cloud Storage (via process_creation)
Malicious Data Exfiltration via Renamed Rclone Using Masqueraded Configuration
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.