Mount Execution Detected via Defend for Containers

Last updated 23 days ago on 2026-01-15
Created 2 years ago on 2023-10-26

About

This rule detects the use of the mount utility from inside a privileged container. The mount command is used to make a device or file system accessible to the system, and then to connect its root directory to a specified mount point on the local file system. When launched inside a privileged container--a container deployed with all the capabilities of the host machine-- an attacker can access sensitive host level files which could be used for further privilege escalation and container escapes to the host machine. Any usage of mount inside a running privileged container should be further investigated.
Tags
Data Source: Elastic Defend for ContainersDomain: ContainerOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

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

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-cloud_defend.process*
Related Integrations

cloud_defend(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query
text code block:
process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action == "exec" and ( process.name == "mount" or ( /* account for tools that execute utilities as a subprocess, in this case the target utility name will appear as a process arg */ process.name in ("bash", "dash", "sh", "tcsh", "csh", "zsh", "ksh", "fish", "busybox") and process.args in ( "mount", "/bin/mount", "/usr/bin/mount", "/usr/local/bin/mount" ) and /* default exclusion list to not FP on default multi-process commands */ not process.args in ( "which", "/bin/which", "/usr/bin/which", "/usr/local/bin/which", "man", "/bin/man", "/usr/bin/man", "/usr/local/bin/man", "chmod", "/bin/chmod", "/usr/bin/chmod", "/usr/local/bin/chmod", "chown", "/bin/chown", "/usr/bin/chown", "/usr/local/bin/chown" ) ) ) and container.security_context.privileged == true and process.interactive == true and container.id like "*"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Mount Execution Detected via Defend for Containers 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(external, opens in a new tab or window).