Virtual Machine Discovery
Where this stands
A Sigma rule exists for this technique in the corpus.
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When a detection for this fires
Discovery and enumerationSomeone was mapping the estate. On its own it is weak evidence; alongside anything else it is a timeline anchor.What the technique is
An adversary may attempt to enumerate running virtual machines (VMs) after gaining access to a host or hypervisor. For example, adversaries may enumerate a list of VMs on an ESXi hypervisor using a Hypervisor CLI such as esxcli or vim-cmd (e.g. esxcli vm process list or vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms). Adversaries may also directly leverage a graphical user interface, such as VMware vCenter, in order to view virtual machines on a host. Adversaries may use the information from Virtual Machine Discovery during discovery to shape follow-on behaviors. Subsequently discovered VMs may be leveraged for follow-on activities such as Service Stop or Data Encrypted for Impact.
Read it on attack.mitre.orgWhat MITRE says you would watch
- AN0572
Monitor for execution of hypervisor management commands such as esxcli vm process list or vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms that enumerate virtual machines. Defenders observe unexpected users issuing VM listing commands outside normal administrative workflows.
- AN0573
Detects attempts to enumerate VMs via hypervisor tools like virsh, VBoxManage, or qemu-img. Defender correlates suspicious command invocations with parent process lineage and unexpected users.
- AN0574
Detects enumeration of VMs using PowerShell (Get-VM), VMware Workstation (vmrun.exe), or Hyper-V (VBoxManage.exe). Defender observes suspicious command lines executed by unexpected users or outside normal administrative sessions.
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