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Newly Observed IPSEC NAT Traversal Peer

This rule identifies outbound IPSEC NAT Traversal (NAT-T) traffic to an external destination IP that was not observed during the previous 5 days. IPSEC is a VPN technology that allows one system to talk to another…

Description

This rule identifies outbound IPSEC NAT Traversal (NAT-T) traffic to an external destination IP that was not observed during the previous 5 days. IPSEC is a VPN technology that allows one system to talk to another using encrypted tunnels. NAT Traversal encapsulates IPSEC ESP traffic in UDP and, once a NAT device is detected, both peers float to UDP port 4500 for the tunnel data channel. Newly observed external NAT-T peers may indicate unauthorized VPN use or an adversary tunneling command and control or exfiltration traffic over the Internet.

Detection logic

Its licence does not clear it for publishing here

Sunturai publishes a detection's own text where the licence it arrived under has been reviewed and permits it, and Elastic License 2.0 has not. The query as its source wrote it, its canonical form and the hash that pins this revision are in the workspace record.

Detection requirements

Platform
ESXiLinuxmacOSNetwork DevicesWindows

The rule states no platform. This is derived from the 3 ATT&CK techniques it maps to.

Known benign triggers

  • Newly deployed legitimate site-to-site or client VPN gateways, or established gateways that were inactive for more than 5 days, will generate an alert when first observed. Where these peers are expected, their external destination IP addresses can be excluded.

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