Privilege Escalation via SUID/SGID

Last updated 12 days ago on 2024-12-10
Created 6 months ago on 2024-06-17

About

Identifies instances where a process is executed with user/group ID 0 (root), and a real user/group ID that is not 0. This is indicative of a process that has been granted SUID/SGID permissions, allowing it to run with elevated privileges. Attackers may leverage a misconfiguration for exploitation in order to escalate their privileges to root, or establish a backdoor for persistence.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationTactic: PersistenceData Source: Elastic Defend
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

Persistence (TA0003)(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
process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action == "exec" and (
  (process.user.id == "0" and process.real_user.id != "0") or 
  (process.group.id == "0" and process.real_group.id != "0")
) and (
  process.name in (
    "aa-exec", "ab", "agetty", "alpine", "ar", "arj", "arp", "as", "ascii-xfr", "ash", "aspell",
    "atobm", "awk", "base32", "base64", "basenc", "basez", "bash", "bc", "bridge", "busctl",
    "busybox", "bzip2", "cabal", "capsh", "cat", "choom", "chown", "chroot", "clamscan", "cmp",
    "column", "comm", "cp", "cpio", "cpulimit", "csh", "csplit", "csvtool", "cupsfilter", "curl",
    "cut", "dash", "date", "dd", "debugfs", "dialog", "diff", "dig", "distcc", "dmsetup", "docker",
    "dosbox", "ed", "efax", "elvish", "emacs", "env", "eqn", "espeak", "expand", "expect", "file",
    "find", "fish", "flock", "fmt", "fold", "gawk", "gcore", "gdb", "genie", "genisoimage", "gimp",
    "grep", "gtester", "gzip", "hd", "head", "hexdump", "highlight", "hping3", "iconv", "install",
    "ionice", "ispell", "jjs", "join", "jq", "jrunscript", "julia", "ksh", "ksshell", "kubectl",
    "ld.so", "less", "links", "logsave", "look", "lua", "make", "mawk", "minicom", "more",
    "mosquitto", "msgattrib", "msgcat", "msgconv", "msgfilter", "msgmerge", "msguniq", "multitime",
    "mv", "nasm", "nawk", "ncftp", "nft", "nice", "nl", "nm", "nmap", "node", "nohup", "ntpdate",
    "od", "openssl", "openvpn", "pandoc", "paste", "perf", "perl", "pexec", "pg", "php", "pidstat",
    "pr", "ptx", "python", "rc", "readelf", "restic", "rev", "rlwrap", "rsync", "rtorrent",
    "run-parts", "rview", "rvim", "sash", "scanmem", "sed", "setarch", "setfacl", "setlock", "shuf",
    "soelim", "softlimit", "sort", "sqlite3", "ss", "ssh-agent", "ssh-keygen", "ssh-keyscan",
    "sshpass", "start-stop-daemon", "stdbuf", "strace", "strings", "sysctl", "systemctl", "tac",
    "tail", "taskset", "tbl", "tclsh", "tee", "terraform", "tftp", "tic", "time", "timeout", "troff",
    "ul", "unexpand", "uniq", "unshare", "unsquashfs", "unzip", "update-alternatives", "uudecode",
    "uuencode", "vagrant", "varnishncsa", "view", "vigr", "vim", "vimdiff", "vipw", "w3m", "watch",
    "wc", "wget", "whiptail", "xargs", "xdotool", "xmodmap", "xmore", "xxd", "xz", "yash", "zsh",
    "zsoelim"
  ) or 
  process.name == "ip" and (
    (process.args == "-force" and process.args in ("-batch", "-b")) or (process.args == "exec")
  )
) and not process.parent.name == "spine"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Privilege Escalation via SUID/SGID 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).