Suspicious Shell History Anti-Forensics via HISTFILE Manipulation

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1070.003Clear Command History
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects commands that unset or redirect the shell history file to prevent command logging which the freenode Linux backdoor operators use to hide activity. Observed in NCC Group research analyzing the Linux backdoor from the freenode IRC network compromise. Disabling shell history is an anti-forensic behavior commonly seen in hands-on-keyboard intrusions.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1070.003 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Shell History and Log Clearing on Linux

Suspicious Shell History Disabling via HISTFILE Redirection on Linux

Suspicious Shell History Clearing or Disabling (via process_creation)

Suspicious COLDRIVER RunMRU History Clearing via Reg Delete (via process_creation)

Suspicious File Immutability Set via chattr for Anti-Removal on Linux

Suspicious Clearing of Linux Authentication and History Logs

Windows Registry RunMRU Key Deletion

Windows: Detect reg.exe Deletion of RunMRU Registry Key

Windows PowerShell Command History Disable via Remove-Module psreadline

Suspicious Shell History Anti-Forensics via HISTFILE Manipulation

Pivot detection · T1070.003 · 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 →