Sysmon for Linux
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Sysmon for Linux monitors and logs system activity including process lifetime, network connections, and file system writes to help identify malicious activity.
Summary
Sysmon for Linux is an open-source monitoring tool, free to use, that logs system activity such as process lifetime, network connections, and file system writes using eBPFeBPFA Linux technology for running verified programs inside the kernel without changing its source. Tools use it to observe processes, enforce rules and process network traffic., with output readable via syslog or a bundled log viewer. It runs as a background service on the host, installed from Microsoft's own Linux package repositories and surviving reboots, which fits it into existing log pipelines rather than a standalone analysis workflow. It is aimed at detection engineers and SOCSOCA security operations center, the team or function that monitors threats, investigates alerts and coordinates incident response. Its work can be internal, outsourced or shared. analysts who need durable, low-level endpoint telemetry for building or tuning detections rather than a one-off investigation. As part of the Sysinternals suite, it brings the Windows Sysmon model to Linux hosts, covering distributions including Amazon Linux 2023 and ARM64ARM64The 64-bit instruction set architecture from ARM Holdings, used in modern mobile chips, Apple Silicon, and cloud server CPUs; tools target it to run natively on those platforms without emulation overhead. architectures. With 19 contributors, regular releases, and the latest one only 23 days old, the project is actively maintained.
Sysmon for Linux monitors and logs system activity including process lifetime, network connections, and file system writes to help identify malicious activity.
How Sysmon for Linux helps
Which process on this host made that outbound connection, and is it still running?
logs process lifetime alongside network connections to the syslog pipeline, so the two events can be correlated by process and timestamp during review
What did an intruder actually touch on disk during the time they had access?
records file system writes as they happen, giving a chronological list of paths modified that persists across reboots rather than being lost on restart
What ran on this box last night that nobody can account for?
captures process lifetime events continuously in the background, so a gap-free history exists to search once suspicious activity is noticed rather than requiring monitoring to already be live
Can the same detection logic I use on Windows endpoints be applied to this Linux server?
emits a comparable event stream to Sysmon on Windows as part of the same Sysinternals suite, so existing detection rules and analyst habits carry over to mixed estates
Which of these thousands of log lines are the ones I actually care about?
pipes the raw syslog output through a bundled log-view tool that filters and trims fields, turning a dense stream into a readable, targeted list
Languages
Command line
| option | found in | since | description |
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for Sysmon for Linux, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail Sysmon for Linux puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
3 entries
No entries match these filters.
- September 20261
- May 20241
- September 20231
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in Sysinternals/SysmonForLinux, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 4 +2 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 2 +1 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed not measured of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog not measured open issues today
- Issues opened / month not measured
- Open backlog not measured
- Contributors / month 3
- Commits / month 3
- Stars 2,160
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
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