Sigma rule: Suspicious Velociraptor Child Process

Rule

Title

Suspicious Velociraptor Child Process

Status

experimental

Level

high

Author

Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)

Date

2025-08-29

File

rules/windows/process_creation/proc_creation_win_susp_velociraptor_child_process.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects the suspicious use of the Velociraptor DFIR tool to execute other tools or download additional payloads, as seen in a campaign where it was abused for remote access and to stage further attacks.

Log source

product

windows

category

process_creation

Detection

selection_parent:
    ParentImage|endswith: '\Velociraptor.exe'
selection_child_vscode_tunnel:
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'code.exe'
        - 'tunnel'
        - '--accept-server-license-terms'
selection_child_msiexec:
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'msiexec'
        - '/i'
        - 'http'
selection_child_powershell:
    Image|endswith:
        - '\powershell.exe'
        - '\powershell_ise.exe'
        - '\pwsh.exe'
    CommandLine|contains:
        - 'Invoke-WebRequest '
        - 'IWR '
        - '.DownloadFile'
        - '.DownloadString'
# Add more child process patterns as needed
condition: selection_parent and 1 of selection_child_*

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Legitimate administrators or incident responders might use Velociraptor to execute scripts or tools. However, the combination of Velociraptor spawning these specific processes with these command lines is suspicious. Tuning may be required to exclude known administrative actions or specific scripts.

Tags

• attack.command-and-control
• attack.persistence
• attack.t1219

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

• T1219

References

• https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2025/08/26/velociraptor-incident-response-tool-abused-for-remote-access/

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