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Detection Strategies DET0340 — User Execution – Malicious Copy & Paste (browser/email → shell with obfuscated one-liner) – T1204.004
DET0340

User Execution – Malicious Copy & Paste (browser/email → shell with obfuscated one-liner) – T1204.004

3 analytic(s) · 1 technique(s) detected

Analytics

3
AN0962 Analytic 0962
Windows

A user is socially engineered (web page, email, document) to open Run/PowerShell/CMD and paste an obfuscated one-liner. The chain is: (1) user context active in a browser/email/office app → (2) process creation of a command interpreter with suspicious arguments (base64/Invoke-Expression/web download/pipeline to shell) → (3) optional file drop in %TEMP% or %APPDATA% → (4) outbound network connection to an external domain. Events are correlated within a short window and with consistent user/session.

WinEventLog:Security EventCode=4688 WinEventLog:PowerShell EventCode=4103, 4104, 4105, 4106 WinEventLog:Sysmon EventCode=11 WinEventLog:Sysmon EventCode=3, 22 NSM:Flow HTTP(S) requests with User-Agents typical of PowerShell or curl from desktop; or URIs matching paste-inspired payload hosts
[TimeWindow] Correlation horizon from parent app (browser/email/office) to interpreter spawn (e.g., 15 minutes).
[ParentProcessAllowList] Legitimate automation that spawns PowerShell/CMD from Office/Email/Browser.
[SuspiciousArgPatterns] List of command-line substrings indicating pasted one-liners (e.g., '-enc', 'FromBase64String', 'IEX(', 'DownloadString', 'Invoke-WebRequest', 'curl|wget.*\|\s*(sh|bash|powershell)').
[WritePaths] Directories treated as risky for first-stage drops (%TEMP%, %APPDATA%, %PUBLIC%).
[OutboundCIDRBlockList] Internet ranges/domains to alert on for first-run egress.
AN0963 Analytic 0963
Linux

User pastes a multi-line or one-liner into a terminal (bash/zsh) that downloads/decodes and executes content. Chain: terminal exec of curl/wget/bash/sh with pipe to interpreter or base64-decode → transient file under /tmp|~/.cache → immediate outbound egress.

auditd:SYSCALL execve: exe in (/usr/bin/bash,/usr/bin/sh,/usr/bin/zsh,/usr/bin/python*) AND cmdline matches '(curl|wget).*(\||\|\s*sh|bash)|base64\s*-d|python\s*-c' auditd:SYSCALL open: File creation under /tmp, /var/tmp, ~/.cache with executable bit or shell shebang NSM:Flow New egress to Internet by the same UID/host shortly after terminal exec
[TerminalProcessNames] Gui/tty terminals to monitor (gnome-terminal, konsole, iTerm2, tmux).
[RiskyFilePaths] Temp/cache paths to watch for first-stage drops.
[AnomalousUserSet] Users who should never run curl/wget or compilers.
[TimeWindow] Exec→file→egress correlation window (e.g., 10 minutes).
AN0964 Analytic 0964
macOS

User pastes an obfuscated command into Terminal.app/iTerm2 that decodes or downloads code and executes. Detects Terminal/iTerm2 spawning bash/zsh/python with suspicious pipeline/base64 patterns followed by file writes in ~/Library or /tmp and outbound network connections.

macos:unifiedlog exec: ParentImage in (Terminal, iTerm2) AND Image in (/bin/zsh,/bin/bash,/usr/bin/python*) AND CommandLine matches '(curl|wget).*(\||\|\s*sh|bash)|base64 -D|python -c' macos:osquery Interpreter exec with suspicious arguments as above macos:unifiedlog create: New files in /tmp or ~/Library/Application Support/* with executable or script extensions NSM:Flow Egress to non-approved networks from host after terminal exec
[ParentAppScope] Terminal apps to treat as user-paste origins (Terminal, iTerm2, VSCode integrated terminal).
[CommandPatternList] macOS-specific one-liner traits (pbpaste|base64 -D|curl ... | sh).
[AllowListedDevUsers] Developers/automation accounts expected to run such commands.

Detected Techniques

1

Details

MITRE ID
DET0340
STIX ID
x-mitre-detection-strategy--0dabfa5e-9c35-48ec-b825-ff1cce7a3d00
Analytics
3
Techniques Detected
1
By Tactic
Execution
1
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