Suspicious Cloudflared Tunnel Execution for Command and Control by Kraken Ransomware

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-11
Updated
2026-09-11

ATT&CK techniques

C2
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects execution of the cloudflared client to establish an outbound tunnel. The Kraken ransomware group abuses Cloudflare Tunnel together with SSHFS and RDP to maintain covert access and move laterally. Attacker use of cloudflared can bypass perimeter controls by tunneling traffic over trusted Cloudflare infrastructure.

Related detections9 linkedT1572 — drag to rearrange
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Possible Plink Reverse Tunnel Command Line Execution
Chisel Reverse Tunnel Tool Execution from Temporary Directory
Malicious Anubis Ransomware Cloudflare Tunnel via cloudflared (via process_creation)
Obfuscated RDP Tunneling Configuration Enabled for Port Forwarding (via process_creation)
Malicious RDP Tunneling (via rdp)
Suspicious SSH Reverse Tunnel via Renamed plink Utility on Triofox Host
Suspicious OpenSSH Reverse Tunnel Establishment via ssh.exe
Suspicious HelloNet SSH Reverse Tunnel via frontpage.exe (via process_creation)
Suspicious Cloudflared Tunnel Execution for Command and Control by Kraken Ransomware
Pivot detection · T1572 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.