Suspicious PsExec Named Pipe Creation on Target Host

ATT&CK techniques

Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1021.002SMB/Windows Admin Shares
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of the stdin stdout and stderr named pipes used by PsExec style remote execution as described in the WithSecure lab where communication rode over three PsExec named pipes on the IPC share. This pipe naming convention persists even when the service binary is renamed which makes it an effective detection for renamed PsExec and similar remote execution utilities.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1021.002 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious WMIexec Style Command Output Redirection to Local Admin Share

Malicious Cobalt Strike Default Named Pipe Activity

Suspicious PsExec Service Launching Encoded PowerShell Payload

Suspicious Impacket Style Command Execution with ADMIN Share Output Redirect

Suspicious Active Directory Reconnaissance via In-Memory Offensive PowerShell (via ps_script)

Suspicious NetExec Post-Exploitation Tool Execution via nxc (via process_creation)

Suspicious PsExec Named Pipe Creation on Target Host

Pivot detection · T1021.002 · 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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