beacon-client

The command beacon-client can be used to connect to a Cobalt Strike Team Server given a beacon config or payload. It will read the beacon settings so it can communicate with the C2 server, and then it will start do check-ins and retrieve Tasks like a real beacon.

Tip

If you enable -v / --verbose logging, and you have the rich module installed. It will automatically use rich to render the console logging which can be easier on the eyes.

The implementation of the client in beacon-client is observing only, meaning it does not implement any of the beacon functionality such as executing commands or listing files and does not send any Callback data to the Team Server.

If you want to know how to implement your own custom beacon client that can respond to tasks, please refer to this tutorial.

The --writer parameter of beacon-client allows you to log the retrieved beacon tasks to a file. This can be useful for debugging or logging of tasks that are being sent. The output is written as flow.record records and can be dumped using the tool rdump which is part of the flow.record package and is installed as a dependency.

To ensure you have all the dependencies for beacon-client you can use the following pip command:

$ pip install -e 'dissect.cobaltstrike[c2]'

Here is an example usage of connecting to a Team Server with custom Beacon metadata, we choose a fixed beacon id so we can connect to it again later without creating a new beacon session at the Team Server:

$ beacon-client beacon.bin -vi 1234 --user "wing" --computer "safecomputer" -w c2.records.gz

  • This will launch the beacon-client using beacon.bin as the BeaconConfig.

  • The -v flag will enable verbose logging. (recommend to see what is going on)

  • The -i flag will set the Beacon ID to 1234.

  • The --user and --computer arguments are used to set the username and computer name in the Beacon Metadata.

  • and -w or --writer writes decrypted C2 packets such as Tasks and Callback packets to the file c2.records.gz.

There are many more options that can be overridden, by default most settings are randomized. To see all the options run it with --help and is also documented here: beacon-client - CLI interface.

Dumping saved records

The contents of c2.records.gz can then be dumped using the rdump (record dump) tool:

$ rdump c2.records.gz

For more advanced usage of rdump use --help or see the documentation for flow.record.

If beacon-client is not in your path, you can also run the command using the following Python module:

$ python -m dissect.cobaltstrike.client --help

beacon-client - CLI interface

beacon-client [-h] [-d DOMAIN] [-p PORT] [--sleeptime SLEEPTIME] [--jitter JITTER]
              [-c COMPUTER] [-u USER] [-P PROCESS] [-i BEACON_ID] [-I INTERNAL_IP]
              [--arch {x86,x64}] [--barch {x86,x64}] [--high-integrity] [-n] [-w WRITER] [-v]
              [-s] [--no-warning]
              BEACON

beacon-client positional arguments

  • BEACON - beacon to use as configuration (default: None)

beacon-client options

beacon-client beacon communication

  • -d DOMAIN, --domain DOMAIN - override the domain configured in the beacon (default: None)

  • -p PORT, --port PORT - override the port configured in the beacon (default: None)

beacon-client beacon sleep options

  • --sleeptime SLEEPTIME - override sleeptime settings (in milliseconds) (default: None)

  • --jitter JITTER - override jitter settings (in percentage) (default: None)

beacon-client beacon metadata

  • -c COMPUTER, --computer COMPUTER - computer name (None = random) (default: None)

  • -u USER, --user USER - user name (None = random) (default: None)

  • -P PROCESS, --process PROCESS - process name (None = random) (default: None)

  • -i BEACON_ID, --beacon-id BEACON_ID - beacon id (None = random) (default: None)

  • -I INTERNAL_IP, --internal-ip INTERNAL_IP - internal ip (None = random) (default: None)

beacon-client beacon metadata flags

  • --arch ARCH - system architecture (None = random) (default: None)

  • --barch BARCH - beacon architecture (None = random) (default: None)

  • --high-integrity - set high integrity flag

beacon-client output options

  • -w WRITER, --writer WRITER - record writer (default: None)

  • -v, --verbose - verbosity level (-v for INFO, -vv for DEBUG) (default: 0)

  • -s, --silent - suppress empty task messages