Malicious Hidden Virtual Machine Launched via QEMU for Persistence

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1564.006Run Virtual Instance
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1105Ingress Tool Transfer
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects QEMU started with a qcow2 disk image and a user mode network device which adversaries use to run a concealed virtual machine on the host to evade endpoint detection and maintain persistence. Running malicious tooling such as Sliver inside an attacker supplied VM hides its activity from host based sensors. Detecting these QEMU arguments surfaces the bring your own virtual machine technique.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1105 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious PowerShell Download to Temp and In-Memory Execution via IEX (via process_creation)

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Suspicious Payload Download from Transfer.sh After ScreenConnect Exploitation (via proxy)

Malicious Hidden Virtual Machine Launched via QEMU for Persistence

Pivot detection · T1105 · 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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