Suspicious Command Execution Inside a Kubernetes Pod (via audit)
- Product
- kubernetes
- Service
- audit
- Author
- HuntRule
- Published
- 2026-09-04
- Updated
- 2026-09-04
ATT&CK techniques
ExecutionRecon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
What it detects
This rule detects a create request against the pods/exec subresource, which opens an interactive shell inside a running container, a technique attackers use for hands-on-keyboard access to a Kubernetes workload. Exec into pod is tracked in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report cloud coverage. Detecting these requests surfaces interactive access to container workloads.
Reporting behind it
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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