Suspicious Anonymous Access to Kubernetes API Server via Audit Log

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1526Cloud Service Discovery
- T1613Container and Resource Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects Kubernetes API server requests authenticated as system:anonymous or belonging to the system:unauthenticated group. Adversaries query an unauthenticated API server to enumerate pods, secrets, and other cluster resources for reconnaissance and initial access. Anonymous access to the control plane indicates a misconfigured cluster exposed to untrusted callers.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1613 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Azure OpenAI Model Enumeration and Deployment Creation (via azure)

Suspicious Container Image Export via ctr in Cloud Model Exfiltration

Suspicious Kubernetes Enumeration via kubectl in Cloud Compromise

Malicious AzureHound Cloud Reconnaissance via User Agent (via azure)

Suspicious S3 Access from Desktop File Transfer Clients by Bling Libra

Suspicious Kubernetes Permission Enumeration via kubectl auth can-i

Suspicious Kubernetes SelfSubjectAccessReview Permission Enumeration

Malicious Kubernetes Reconnaissance Tooling Activity

Suspicious Container Environment Reconnaissance in Serverless Build

Suspicious Anonymous Access to Kubernetes API Server via Audit Log

Pivot detection · T1613 · 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 →