Malicious Kubernetes Reconnaissance Tooling Activity

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1613Container and Resource Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects Kubernetes reconnaissance and attack tooling either via the Rakkess access matrix user agent or the deployment of known offensive container images such as kubiscan kube-hunter and kubestriker as described in NCC Group Kubernetes detection engineering research. Adversaries run these tools to map RBAC permissions and hunt for cluster misconfigurations before privilege escalation.

Reporting behind it

Related detections7 linkedT1613 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Kubernetes SelfSubjectAccessReview Permission Enumeration

Suspicious Container Environment Reconnaissance in Serverless Build

Suspicious Kubernetes Secret Enumeration via kubectl

Suspicious Kubernetes API Request From Anonymous User

Suspicious Kubernetes Secret and Permission Enumeration via kubectl (via process_creation)

Suspicious Anonymous Access to Kubernetes API Server via Audit Log

Kubernetes audit log signals potential tool and shell enumeration/execution activity

Malicious Kubernetes Reconnaissance Tooling Activity

Pivot detection · T1613 · 7 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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