
Summary
Detects when the finger.exe utility is spawned with a command line containing an @ character, indicating a remote host/server was specified. Finger is a legacy protocol client that has largely fallen out of use and is commonly abused as a living-off-the-land binary (LOLBIN) to fetch encoded payloads or establish covert C2 channels with an attacker-controlled finger server. The analytic searches endpoint process events for finger.exe (by process_name or original_file_name) and requires a command line containing @ to flag potential remote connections. Results are aggregated by process details and parent-child relationships to provide context about which process invoked finger.exe and the remote destination. The rule is designed for telemetry from EDR agents and relies on Splunk CIM-normalized endpoint process data to minimize false positives while highlighting suspicious remote-connect behavior.
Categories
- Endpoint
- Windows
Data Sources
- Script
- Windows Registry
- Logon Session
- File
- Drive
- Process
- Kernel
- Driver
- Volume
- Cloud Service
- Malware Repository
- Network Traffic
- Scheduled Job
- Firmware
- Active Directory
- Service
- Domain Name
- WMI
- Application Log
- Image
- Container
- Pod
- Sensor Health
- Named Pipe
- Internet Scan
- Certificate
- User Account
- Snapshot
- Module
ATT&CK Techniques
- T1071
Created: 2026-09-21