Elastic Security Detection Rules

Potential Privilege Escalation via PKEXEC

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-03-20
Created 4 years ago on 2022-01-26

About

Identifies an attempt to exploit a local privilege escalation in polkit pkexec (CVE-2021-4034) via unsecure environment variable injection. Successful exploitation allows an unprivileged user to escalate to the root user.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationData Source: Elastic EndgameUse Case: VulnerabilityData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: SentinelOneLanguage: eql
Severity
high
Risk Score
73
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068)(opens in a new tab or window)

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Hijack Execution Flow (T1574)(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
endgame-*logs-endpoint.events.file*logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

sentinel_one_cloud_funnel(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
file where host.os.type == "linux" and file.path : "/*GCONV_PATH*"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential Privilege Escalation via PKEXEC 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).