Suspicious Cron Job Downloading and Executing Payload via GlobalProtect Exploitation

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1053.003Cron
Persistence
- T1053.003Cron
Priv Esc
- T1053.003Cron
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a malicious cron entry that uses wget piped to bash observed during exploitation of the GlobalProtect CVE-2024-3400 vulnerability. Attackers established persistence and staged tooling through /etc/cron.d/update. Download-and-execute cron jobs provide resilient footholds on compromised appliances.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1053.003 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Cron Job Executing Binary From var tmp via Process Creation

Suspicious Cron Job Persistence Creation on Linux (via process_creation)

Suspicious Cron Persistence File Created in System Cron Directories

Linux eBPF Backdoor File Persistence via cron.d and sudoers.d (ebpfbackdoor)

Suspicious Cron Job Downloading and Executing Payload via GlobalProtect Exploitation

Pivot detection · T1053.003 · 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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