Suspicious External IP Discovery via curl to ifconfig.me via process_creation

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1016System Network Configuration Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects curl invocations that query the public IP lookup service ifconfig.me. MuddyWater used this command to determine the victim host external address for situational awareness prior to establishing tunnels, and while such lookups occur in some admin scripts they are unusual on endpoints and warrant review alongside other reconnaissance.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1016 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious DNS Zone Enumeration via dnscmd

Suspicious Failed DNS Server Zone Transfer for Enumeration Purposes (via dns-server)

Suspicious Reconnaissance Spawned by Injected SearchProtocolHost via process_creation

Suspicious External IP Discovery via curl to ifconfig.me via process_creation

Pivot detection · T1016 · 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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