Suspicious Fileless Execution From Memory File Descriptor via PUMAKIT

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
linux
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-18
Updated
2026-09-18

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a process executing from an in-memory file descriptor path such as memfd or dev fd which is the fileless execution technique used by the PUMAKIT rootkit loader to run payloads without touching disk. Adversaries use memfd_create and execveat to evade file based detection and forensic recovery on Linux hosts.

Related detections9 linkedT1014 — drag to rearrange
Suspicious Kernel Module Load Or Unload For Rootkit Deployment via PUMAKIT
Suspicious DllHost Spawned By MMC Without Arguments via PASTALOADER
Malicious ABYSSWORKER EDR-Killer Driver Load via smuol.sys
Suspicious PowerShell Reflective Assembly Load With GZip Decompression (via process_creation)
Malicious ValleyRAT KernelQuick Rootkit Service and Shellcode Store Registry Keys
Malicious Koske Userland Rootkit Installation via ld.so.preload (via file_event)
Malicious TeamTNT prochider Rootkit Deployment as Shared Object (via file_event)
Malicious perfctl Rootkit Library Drop via ld.so.preload (via file_event)
PowerShell Reflective Shellcode Loader via Dynamic API Delegates (via ps_script)
Suspicious Fileless Execution From Memory File Descriptor via PUMAKIT
Pivot detection · T1014 · 9 related

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