Elastic Security Detection Rules

Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) Version Discovery

Last updated 7 days ago on 2025-01-24
Created a month ago on 2024-12-16

About

This rule detects PAM version discovery activity on Linux systems. PAM version discovery can be an indication of an attacker attempting to backdoor the authentication process through malicious PAM modules.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: DiscoveryTactic: PersistenceTactic: Credential AccessData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: CrowdstrikeData Source: SentinelOneLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ System Information Discovery (T1082)(opens in a new tab or window)

Persistence (TA0003)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Create or Modify System Process (T1543)(opens in a new tab or window)

Credential Access (TA0006)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Modify Authentication Process (T1556)(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.*endgame-*logs-crowdstrike.fdr*logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

crowdstrike(opens in a new tab or window)

sentinel_one_cloud_funnel(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and
  event.action in ("exec", "exec_event", "start", "ProcessRollup2") and process.parent.name != null and
  (
    (process.name in ("dpkg", "dpkg-query") and process.args == "libpam-modules") or
    (process.name == "rpm" and process.args == "pam")
  ) and
not process.parent.name in ("dcservice", "inspectorssmplugin")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) Version Discovery 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).