Privilege Escalation via Root Crontab File Modification

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-03-18

Created 5 years ago on 2021-01-27

About

Identifies modifications to the root crontab file. Adversaries may overwrite this file to gain code execution with root privileges by exploiting privileged file write or move related vulnerabilities.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql

Severity

high

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Scheduled Task/Job (T1053)(opens in a new tab or window)

License

Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type: Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: logs-endpoint.events.*
Related Integrations: endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)
Query

file where host.os.type == "macos" and event.action == "modification" and
 file.path like "/private/var/at/tabs/root" and 
 not process.executable like "/usr/bin/crontab"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Privilege Escalation via Root Crontab File Modification in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).