Cobalt Strike Command and Control Beaconedit

Cobalt Strike is a threat emulation platform commonly modified and used by adversaries to conduct network attack and exploitation campaigns. This rule detects a network activity algorithm leveraged by Cobalt Strike implant beacons for command and control.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • packetbeat-*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-6m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Network
  • Threat Detection
  • Command and Control

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.13.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positivesedit

This rule should be tailored to either exclude systems, as sources or destinations, in which this behavior is expected.

Investigation guideedit

Threat intel

This activity has been observed in FIN7 campaigns.

Rule queryedit

event.category:(network OR network_traffic) AND type:(tls OR http) AND
network.transport:tcp AND
destination.domain:/[a-z]{3}.stage.[0-9]{8}\..*/

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 5 (7.13.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.0 release)
  • Formatting only