Sigma rule: Docker Container Discovery Via Dockerenv Listing

Rule

Title

Docker Container Discovery Via Dockerenv Listing

Status

test

Level

low

Author

Seth Hanford

Date

2023-08-23

File

rules/linux/process_creation/proc_creation_lnx_susp_dockerenv_recon.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects listing or file reading of ".dockerenv" which can be a sing of potential container discovery

Log source

product

linux

category

process_creation

Detection

selection:
    Image|endswith:
        # Note: add additional tools and utilities to increase coverage
        - '/cat'
        - '/dir'
        - '/find'
        - '/ls'
        - '/stat'
        - '/test'
        - 'grep'
    CommandLine|endswith: '.dockerenv'
condition: selection

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Legitimate system administrator usage of these commands
• Some container tools or deployments may use these techniques natively to determine how they proceed with execution, and will need to be filtered

Tags

• attack.discovery
• attack.t1082

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

• T1082

References

• https://blog.skyplabs.net/posts/container-detection/
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20010199/how-to-determine-if-a-process-runs-inside-lxc-docker

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules/linux/process_creation/proc_creation_lnx_susp_dockerenv_recon.yml