Suspicious Localhost Ping Loop Used as Execution Delay

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-11-01
Updated
2026-11-01

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → Discovery
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Cred Access

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a batch command that changes the code page and pings localhost multiple times to sleep before continuing. QuasarRAT loaders use chcp 65001 followed by ping -n 10 localhost as a self-imposed delay to evade sandbox analysis and space out staged execution. This benign-looking ping-based sleep is a recurring evasion pattern in droppers.

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