Malicious XGU Pivot Named Pipe Creation by SPECTRALVIPER

ATT&CK techniques

C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1090.001Internal Proxy
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of a named pipe containing the XGU--Pivot marker used by the SPECTRALVIPER backdoor for internal pivoting and proxied communication. The activity is associated with the OceanLotus (APT32) espionage campaign that relays traffic between compromised hosts through named-pipe channels. Detecting this specific pipe name is important because it reveals lateral movement and internal proxy infrastructure that standard network monitoring would miss.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1090.001 — drag to rearrange

Malicious VOLTZITE Netsh Portproxy Port Forwarding via Command Line (via process_creation)

Malicious SOCKS Proxy Tunnel via Earthworm Rssocks by UAT-8837

Malicious Volt Typhoon Port Proxy Configuration via Netsh (via process_creation)

Suspicious netsh Port Proxy Configuration for Covert Tunneling

Malicious Port Forwarding Tunnel via Netsh Portproxy (via process_creation)

Windows Execution of cloudflared for Cloudflare Try/Quick Tunnel Ad-hoc Tunneling

Windows Process Execution of Renamed cloudflared.exe with Tunnel/Run Command Arguments

Windows execution of cloudflared.exe from a non-default directory

Windows Process Creation: Chisel Tunneling Tool (chisel.exe) Execution

Malicious XGU Pivot Named Pipe Creation by SPECTRALVIPER

Pivot detection · T1090.001 · 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 →