SSH (Secure Shell) to the Internet

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Detects network events that may indicate the use of SSH traffic to the Internet. SSH is commonly used by system administrators to remotely control a system using the command line shell. If it is exposed to the Internet, it should be done with strong security controls as it is frequently targeted and exploited by threat actors as an initial access or back-door vector.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • packetbeat-*
  • logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5 minutes

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Network
  • Threat Detection
  • Command and Control

Version: 7 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.6.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.2

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Potential false positives

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SSH connections may be made directly to Internet destinations in order to access Linux cloud server instances but such connections are usually made only by engineers. In such cases, only SSH gateways, bastions or jump servers may be expected Internet destinations and can be exempted from this rule. SSH may be required by some work-flows such as remote access and support for specialized software products and servers. Such work-flows are usually known and not unexpected. Usage that is unfamiliar to server or network owners can be unexpected and suspicious.

Rule query

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event.category:(network or network_traffic) and network.transport:tcp
and (destination.port:22 or event.dataset:zeek.ssh) and source.ip:(
10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16 ) and not
destination.ip:( 10.0.0.0/8 or 127.0.0.0/8 or 169.254.0.0/16 or
172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16 or 224.0.0.0/4 or "::1" or "FE80::/10"
or "FF00::/8" )

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 7 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 6 (7.11.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.category:(network or network_traffic) and network.transport:tcp
    and (destination.port:22 or event.dataset:zeek.ssh) and
    source.ip:(10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16) and not
    destination.ip:(10.0.0.0/8 or 127.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 or
    192.168.0.0/16 or "::1")
Version 5 (7.10.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.9.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    network.transport:tcp and destination.port:22 and
    source.ip:(10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16) and not
    destination.ip:(10.0.0.0/8 or 127.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 or
    192.168.0.0/16 or "::1")
Version 3 (7.7.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    network.transport: tcp and destination.port:22 and (
    network.direction: outbound or ( source.ip: (10.0.0.0/8 or
    172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16) and not destination.ip: (10.0.0.0/8
    or 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16) ) )
Version 2 (7.6.1 release)
  • Removed auditbeat-*, packetbeat-*, and winlogbeat-* from the rule indices.