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Vol. 1 · Ed. 2026
CyberGlossary
Entry № 861

osquery

¿Qué es osquery?

osqueryAn open-source endpoint instrumentation framework, originally from Facebook, that exposes operating-system state — processes, sockets, files, users, kernel modules — as a SQL-queryable virtual database for inventory, detection, and IR.


osquery is an open-source agent that turns operating-system state into a SQL interface. Originally developed at Facebook and released in 2014, now under the Linux Foundation, it runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD and exposes hundreds of tables — `processes`, `listening_ports`, `users`, `crontab`, `kernel_extensions`, `firefox_addons`, `chrome_extensions`, `dns_resolvers`, and many more — that a defender can query with familiar SELECTs. osquery can be run interactively (`osqueryi`) or as a daemon (`osqueryd`) that streams the results of scheduled queries to a fleet manager such as Fleet, Kolide, Zentral, or commercial XDRs. Use cases include asset inventory, compliance reporting (CIS Benchmark checks via SQL), threat hunting (e.g. 'show me all processes whose binary path is in a temp directory'), incident response (rapid fleet-wide IOC search), and configuration drift detection. Because the agent does not ship its own detections — only data — osquery is often paired with a separate detection layer (ELK, Sigma, EDR) or with a managed offering. It remains one of the most widely used open-source endpoint visibility tools.

Ejemplos

  1. 01

    An IR team runs `SELECT pid, name, path FROM processes WHERE path LIKE '/tmp/%';` across 30,000 hosts via a fleet manager to find suspicious dropped binaries.

  2. 02

    A compliance team schedules a nightly osquery to report which endpoints have disk encryption enabled, mapping results to CIS Benchmark checks.

Preguntas frecuentes

¿Qué es osquery?

An open-source endpoint instrumentation framework, originally from Facebook, that exposes operating-system state — processes, sockets, files, users, kernel modules — as a SQL-queryable virtual database for inventory, detection, and IR. Pertenece a la categoría de Defensa y operaciones en ciberseguridad.

¿Qué significa osquery?

An open-source endpoint instrumentation framework, originally from Facebook, that exposes operating-system state — processes, sockets, files, users, kernel modules — as a SQL-queryable virtual database for inventory, detection, and IR.

¿Cómo funciona osquery?

osquery is an open-source agent that turns operating-system state into a SQL interface. Originally developed at Facebook and released in 2014, now under the Linux Foundation, it runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD and exposes hundreds of tables — `processes`, `listening_ports`, `users`, `crontab`, `kernel_extensions`, `firefox_addons`, `chrome_extensions`, `dns_resolvers`, and many more — that a defender can query with familiar SELECTs. osquery can be run interactively (`osqueryi`) or as a daemon (`osqueryd`) that streams the results of scheduled queries to a fleet manager such as Fleet, Kolide, Zentral, or commercial XDRs. Use cases include asset inventory, compliance reporting (CIS Benchmark checks via SQL), threat hunting (e.g. 'show me all processes whose binary path is in a temp directory'), incident response (rapid fleet-wide IOC search), and configuration drift detection. Because the agent does not ship its own detections — only data — osquery is often paired with a separate detection layer (ELK, Sigma, EDR) or with a managed offering. It remains one of the most widely used open-source endpoint visibility tools.

¿Cómo defenderse de osquery?

Las defensas contra osquery combinan habitualmente controles técnicos y prácticas operativas, como se detalla en la definición.

¿Cuáles son otros nombres para osquery?

Nombres alternativos comunes: osqueryd, osqueryi.

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