Detect Bandwidth Hijacking in Splunk
Adversaries may leverage the network bandwidth resources of co-opted systems to complete resource-intensive tasks, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability. This includes proxyjacking (selling victim bandwidth and IP address to proxyware services such as Honeygain, IPRoyal Pawns, Peer2Profit, PacketStream, and Traffmonetizer), participating in botnets for network denial of service campaigns, seeding malicious torrents, and conducting internet-wide scanning using victim systems. Proxyware agents installed on victim machines route third-party traffic through the victim's IP address, generating revenue for the adversary while consuming the victim's bandwidth and potentially implicating the victim's IP in illegal activity.
MITRE ATT&CK
- Tactic
- Impact
- Technique
- T1496 Resource Hijacking
- Sub-technique
- T1496.002 Bandwidth Hijacking
- Canonical reference
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1496/002/
SPL Detection Query
index=wineventlog sourcetype="XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational"
| eval EventCode=coalesce(EventCode, event_id)
| search EventCode IN (1, 3)
| eval KnownProxywareBinary=case(
EventCode=1 AND match(lower(Image),
"(honeygain|iproyal.desktop|iproyal_desktop|pawns\.exe|peer2profit|p2p-node|packetstream|psnode|traffmonetizer|traffmain|earnapp|repocket|bitping|mysterium|myst\.exe)"
), 1,
true(), 0
)
| eval ProxywareDomain=case(
EventCode=3 AND match(lower(coalesce(DestinationHostname, "")),
"(honeygain|iproyal|pawns\.app|peer2profit|packetstream|traffmonetizer|earnapp|repocket|bitping|mysterium)"
), 1,
true(), 0
)
| eval DetectionBranch=case(
KnownProxywareBinary=1, "KnownProxywareBinary",
ProxywareDomain=1, "ProxywareDomainConnection",
true(), "None"
)
| where DetectionBranch!="None"
| table _time, host, User, EventCode, Image, CommandLine, ParentImage, ParentCommandLine,
DestinationIp, DestinationHostname, DestinationPort,
KnownProxywareBinary, ProxywareDomain, DetectionBranch
| sort - _timeDetects bandwidth hijacking using Sysmon event logs. Evaluates Process Creation (Event ID 1) events for known proxyware agent binary names via regex matching on the Image path, and Network Connection (Event ID 3) events for outbound connections to known proxyware service hostnames. The DetectionBranch field indicates which logic triggered for analyst triage. Requires Sysmon DNS logging (Event ID 22) as a supplement for earlier-stage domain-based detection.
Data Sources
Required Sourcetypes
False Positives & Tuning
- Voluntary user installation of proxyware agents for passive income in BYOD environments
- Security testing of proxyware tools in isolated lab or sandbox environments
- CDN infrastructure or legitimate proxy servers whose hostnames match proxyware domain keyword patterns
- Peer-to-peer applications with domain names that partially overlap with proxyware service names
- Authorized network performance testing tools making sustained high-volume external connections
Other platforms for T1496.002
Testing Methodology
Validate this detection against 4 adversary techniques from Atomic Red Team. Each test below lists the behaviour to exercise and the telemetry you should expect to see. Executable commands and cleanup steps are available with Pro.
- Test 1Honeygain Proxyware Agent Binary Simulation (Windows)
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 11: File Create — honeygain.exe written to %APPDATA%. Sysmon Event ID 1: Process Create — Image path ends with 'honeygain.exe' in AppData directory, ParentImage=cmd.exe. Security Event ID 4688 (if command line auditing enabled): ProcessName contains honeygain.exe.
- Test 2Proxyware Registry Run Key Persistence (Windows)
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 13: Registry Value Set — TargetObject=HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Honeygain, Details containing '%APPDATA%\honeygain.exe --token=SIM_TOKEN_12345'. Security Event ID 4657 if registry object access auditing is enabled.
- Test 3High-Volume External Connection Simulation (Windows)
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 3: Approximately 80 Network Connection events from powershell.exe to diverse external IPs (8.8.*.1 range) on port 80, appearing within a short time window. DeviceNetworkEvents in MDE will show InitiatingProcessFileName=powershell.exe with high UniqueRemoteIPs count.
- Test 4Proxyware Domain DNS Resolution (Linux)
Expected signal: Sysmon for Linux Event ID 22: DNS Query events for honeygain.com, peer2profit.com, packetstream.io, traffmonetizer.com, earnapp.com. Process audit records for 'host' command execution. Network captures (if packet capture enabled) show DNS queries to these domains from the host's public IP.
References (7)
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1496/002/
- https://sysdig.com/blog/proxyjacking-attackers-log4j-exploited/
- https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/large-scale-cloud-extortion-operation/
- https://www.welivesecurity.com/2019/07/08/south-korean-users-backdoor-torrents/
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/advanced-hunting-devicenetworkevents-table
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/advanced-hunting-deviceprocessevents-table
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/advanced-hunting-deviceregistryevents-table
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