Malicious Keyhunter Worker Persistence via Systemd Service

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1543.002Systemd Service
Priv Esc
- T1543.002Systemd Service
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1552.001Credentials In Files
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1071Application Layer Protocol
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects command lines referencing the keyhunter-worker component used by the NATS-as-C2 campaign to harvest cloud credentials and AI API keys. The actor installs a systemd unit under a keyhunter-worker path that beacons to a NATS broker for tasking. This named artifact indicates deployment of the credential-harvesting worker for persistence.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1552.001 — drag to rearrange

Malicious JADEPUFFER Python Beacon via Cron

Malicious Marimo Notebook Credential File Access via Shell (via process_creation)

Suspicious Python Process Establishing PostgreSQL Command and Control Channel

Suspicious TruffleHog Execution Spawned by Bun Runtime via Process Creation

Malicious AWS Credential Exfiltration via Curl or Wget in Process Creation

Suspicious sqlite3 Access to gcloud Cached Access Token Database (via process_creation)

Suspicious AWS GetCallerIdentity From TruffleHog User Agent via Cloudtrail

Suspicious GitHub CLI Auth Token Extraction via Command Line

Suspicious Access to macOS Login Keychain by Slow Pisces (via process_creation)

Malicious Keyhunter Worker Persistence via Systemd Service

Pivot detection · T1552.001 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →