Process Discovery

What the technique is

Adversaries may attempt to get information about running processes on a system. Information obtained could be used to gain an understanding of common software/applications running on systems within the network. Administrator or otherwise elevated access may provide better process details. Adversaries may use the information from Process Discovery during automated discovery to shape follow-on behaviors, including whether or not the adversary fully infects the target and/or attempts specific actions. In Windows environments, adversaries could obtain details on running processes using the Tasklist utility via cmd or Get-Process via PowerShell. Information about processes can also be extracted from the output of Native API calls such as CreateToolhelp32Snapshot. In Mac and Linux, this is accomplished with the ps command. Adversaries may also opt to enumerate processes via /proc. ESXi also supports use of the ps command, as well as esxcli system process list. On network devices, Network Device CLI commands such as show processes can be used to display current running processes.

What MITRE says you would watch

• AN0095

  Identifies adversary behavior that launches commands or invokes APIs to enumerate active processes (e.g., tasklist.exe, Get-Process, or CreateToolhelp32Snapshot). Detects execution combined with parent process lineage, network session context, or remote origin.

• AN0096

  Detects execution of common process enumeration utilities (e.g., ps, top, htop) or access to /proc with suspicious ancestry. Correlates command usage with interactive shell context and user role.

• AN0097

  Monitors execution of ps, top, or launchctl with unusual parent processes or from terminal scripts. Also detects AppleScript-based process listing or system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType misuse.