Suspicious Reverse Shell via socat EXEC Redirection

ATT&CK techniques

Execution

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059Command and Scripting Interpreter
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects socat invoked with an EXEC or SYSTEM redirection to a shell, a reverse shell pattern shown in Elastic Linux persistence research. Attackers pair a socat TCP endpoint with EXEC to pipe an interactive shell back to a listener for command and control. Socat spawning a shell process is uncommon in normal administration and points to remote-access tooling.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1059 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Command Shell Spawned by SQL Server via Process Creation (via process_creation)

Suspicious Script Interpreter Spawned by Excel via DarkGate Lure

Suspicious AutoHotkey Script Execution from User Writable Path by DarkGate

Malicious China Chopper Web Shell Command Pattern in IIS Worker Process (via process_creation)

Malicious AutoHotKey Runner AutoNotify Executing AHKBot Looper Script (via process_creation)

Malicious IIS Worker Process Spawning Command Shell after ASP.NET ViewState Injection (via process_creation)

Suspicious MSSQL xp_cmdshell Enablement via sp_configure (via process_creation)

Suspicious Reconnaissance and Payload Download by Node Web Process

Malicious Netcat Reverse Shell via Masqueraded StartMenuExperienceHost

Suspicious Reverse Shell via socat EXEC Redirection

Pivot detection · T1059 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →