Process Discovery

Adversaries may attempt to get information about running processes on a system. Information obtained could be used to gain an understanding of common software/applications running on systems within the network. Administrator or otherwise elevated access may provide better process details. Adversaries may use the information from Process Discovery during automated discovery to shape follow-on behaviors, including whether or not the adversary fully infects the target and/or attempts specific actions. In Windows environments, adversaries could obtain details on running processes using the Tasklist utility via cmd or <code>Get-Process</code> via PowerShell. Information about processes can also be extracted from the output of Native API calls such as <code>CreateToolhelp32Snapshot</code>. In Mac and Linux, this is accomplished with the <code>ps</code> command. Adversaries may also opt to enumerate processes via `/proc`. ESXi also supports use of the `ps` command, as well as `esxcli system process list`.¹² On network devices, Network Device CLI commands such as `show processes` can be used to display current running processes.³⁴

1. Sygnia ESXi Ransomware 2025
2. Crowdstrike Hypervisor Jackpotting Pt 2 2021
3. US-CERT-TA18-106A
4. show_processes_cisco_cmd

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