Elastic Security Detection Rules

Linux User Added to Privileged Group

Last updated 14 days ago on 2025-01-17
Created 2 years ago on 2023-02-13

About

Identifies attempts to add a user to a privileged group. Attackers may add users to a privileged group in order to establish persistence on a system.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: PersistenceData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: Auditd ManagerData Source: CrowdstrikeData Source: SentinelOneLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Create Account (T1136)(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-*auditbeat-*logs-auditd_manager.auditd-*logs-crowdstrike.fdr*logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

auditd_manager(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", "executed", "process_started") and
  process.args in (
    "root", "admin", "wheel", "staff", "sudo","disk", "video", "shadow", "lxc", "lxd"
  ) and
  (
    process.name in ("usermod", "adduser") or
    (process.name == "gpasswd" and process.args in ("-a", "--add", "-M", "--members"))
  )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Linux User Added to Privileged Group 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).