Elastic Security Detection Rules

GKE Privileged Pod Created

Last updated 8 days ago on 2026-06-30
Created 8 days ago on 2026-06-30

About

Detects successful GKE audit events where a pod is created with allowPrivilegeEscalation enabled. This weakens container isolation and can help an attacker escalate toward host access. Standalone pods are included; workloads owned by ReplicaSet, DaemonSet, or StatefulSet controllers are excluded.
Tags
Domain: CloudDomain: KubernetesData Source: GCPData Source: Google Cloud PlatformUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationTactic: ExecutionLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Escape to Host (T1611)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Execution (TA0002)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Deploy Container (T1610)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
Debug or break-glass pods may enable privilege escalation intentionally. Exclude trusted namespaces, users, or deployment patterns after baselining.
License
Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-gcp.audit-*
Related Integrations

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

Query
text code block:
data_stream.dataset:gcp.audit and event.action:"io.k8s.core.v1.pods.create" and event.outcome:success and
gcp.audit.request.spec.containers.securityContext.allowPrivilegeEscalation:true and
not gcp.audit.request.metadata.ownerReferences.kind:("ReplicaSet" or "DaemonSet" or "StatefulSet")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect GKE Privileged Pod Created 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).