Suspicious Bad Apples Reverse Shell via socat pty

ATT&CK techniques

Execution

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.004Unix Shell
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects socat invoked with a pseudo-terminal and stderr redirection, matching the Bad Apples use of socat to establish interactive reverse shells on macOS hosts. Allocating a pty through socat gives an operator a fully interactive remote shell over an attacker-controlled channel. Such socat invocations are uncommon on endpoints and indicate hands-on-keyboard access.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Bad Apples Reverse Shell via socat pty

Pivot detection · T1059.004 · 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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