
Summary
This rule detects Cisco IOS-XE guestshell lifecycle activity by correlating log events across HA_EM, VMAN, IM, and AAA facilities for IOS-XE devices. It searches for guest shell related messages such as "guestshell enable" and "guestshell destroy" alongside VMAN/IM/IOX activation and destruction indicators (e.g., "Successfully activated virtual service 'guestshell'" and related destruction messages). The detection aggregates results into 30-minute bins per destination host, capturing the first and last timestamps and the set of observed event types and messages. A true detection is generated when there is evidence of both an activation (enable command or VMAN/IM activation) and a destruction event (destroy command or VMAN destruction) within the same window, signaling a complete guestshell lifecycle on a device. The search then annotates the destination and event types (e.g., guestshell_enable_command, vman_guestshell_activated, im_iox_guestshell_activated, guestshell_destroy_command, vman_guestshell_destroying, vman_guestshell_destroyed) and surfaces this as an intermediate finding indicating a Cisco IOS-XE device with guestshell enabled and subsequently destroyed. The rule is designed for Splunk deployments with the Cisco IOS Add-on ingesting syslog data (source type cisco:ios) and requires enabling EEM catchall command logging to capture guestshell enable/destroy events as HA_EM/LOG events. It references relevant advisories (CISA AA25-239A; Talos Salt Typhoon) and lists Salt Typhoon as the analytic story. Known false positives are not reported at this time.
Categories
- Network
Data Sources
- Command
- Logon Session
- Process
- File
- Network Traffic
- Web Credential
- Application Log
- Container
- Windows Registry
- Script
- Image
- Cloud Storage
- Internet Scan
- Kernel
- Driver
- Volume
- Cloud Service
- Sensor Health
- Module
- Pod
- Instance
- Snapshot
- Certificate
- WMI
- Named Pipe
- Service
- Domain Name
- Firewall
- Kernel
- Drive
- Certificate
- Process
- Network Share
ATT&CK Techniques
- T1059
- T1611
Created: 2026-06-10