Elastic Security Detection Rules

Kubernetes Suspicious Self-Subject Review

Last updated 2 months ago on 2025-06-18
Created 3 years ago on 2022-06-30

About

This rule detects when a service account or node attempts to enumerate their own permissions via the selfsubjectaccessreview or selfsubjectrulesreview APIs. This is highly unusual behavior for non-human identities like service accounts and nodes. An adversary may have gained access to credentials/tokens and this could be an attempt to determine what privileges they have to facilitate further movement or execution within the cluster.
Tags
Data Source: KubernetesTactic: DiscoveryLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Discovery (TA0007)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Container and Resource Discovery (T1613)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
An administrator may submit this request as an "impersonatedUser" to determine what privileges a particular service account has been granted. However, an adversary may utilize the same technique as a means to determine the privileges of another token other than that of the compromised account.
License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-kubernetes.audit_logs-*
Related Integrations

kubernetes(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
event.dataset : "kubernetes.audit_logs"
  and kubernetes.audit.annotations.authorization_k8s_io/decision:"allow"
  and kubernetes.audit.verb:"create"
  and kubernetes.audit.objectRef.resource:("selfsubjectaccessreviews" or "selfsubjectrulesreviews")
  and (kubernetes.audit.user.username:(system\:serviceaccount\:* or system\:node\:*)
  or kubernetes.audit.impersonatedUser.username:(system\:serviceaccount\:* or system\:node\:*))

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Kubernetes Suspicious Self-Subject Review 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).