Suspicious Chisel SOCKS Tunnel Command Line

ATT&CK techniques

C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1090Proxy
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects command lines invoking the Chisel tunneling tool in client mode with SOCKS proxying. In the Africa financial-sector intrusions Chisel established SOCKS tunnels for covert remote access and lateral movement. This command-line pattern reveals tunneling regardless of the binary name.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1090 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious SSH Reverse Tunnel Over DNS Port

Suspicious Cloudflare Quick Tunnel Used for Covert Access (via dns_query)

Suspicious SOCKS Proxy Autorun Registry Persistence via Registry Set

Suspicious Browser Launched With Injected Proxy Server Argument

Malicious Port Forwarding via QSC pf Tool listen conn Syntax

Suspicious ngrok Tunnel Setup via Authtoken or Service Install (via process_creation)

Malicious SSH Reverse Tunnel with Hidden Key Path (via process_creation)

Malicious Scheduled Task Running svchost32 Proxy from Windows Temp

Malicious ReverseSocks5 Reverse Tunnel Execution via Command Line

Suspicious Chisel SOCKS Tunnel Command Line

Pivot detection · T1090 · 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 →