Potential Privilege Escalation via Container Misconfiguration

Last updated 6 months ago on 2025-02-04

Created 2 years ago on 2023-07-31

About

This rule monitors for the execution of processes that interact with Linux containers through an interactive shell without root permissions. Utilities such as runc and ctr are universal command-line utilities leveraged to interact with containers via root permissions. On systems where the access to these utilities are misconfigured, attackers might be able to create and run a container that mounts the root folder or spawn a privileged container vulnerable to a container escape attack, which might allow them to escalate privileges and gain further access onto the host file system.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationDomain: ContainerData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Escape to Host (T1611)(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.process*
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.name == "runc" and process.args == "run") or
  (process.name == "ctr" and process.args == "run" and process.args in ("--privileged", "--mount"))
) and not user.Ext.real.id == "0" and not group.Ext.real.id == "0" and
process.interactive == true and process.parent.interactive == true

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential Privilege Escalation via Container Misconfiguration 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).