Elastic Security Detection Rules

Process Capability Set via setcap Utility

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-03-20
Created a year ago on 2024-06-03

About

This rule detects the use of the setcap utility to set capabilities on a process. The setcap utility is used to set the capabilities of a binary to allow it to perform privileged operations without needing to run as root. This can be used by attackers to establish persistence by creating a backdoor, or escalate privileges by abusing a misconfiguration on a system.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: PersistenceTactic: Privilege EscalationData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: SentinelOneLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(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*endgame-*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
process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action in ("exec", "exec_event", "start") and
process.name == "setcap" and not (
  process.parent.executable == null or
  process.parent.executable : ("/var/lib/dpkg/*", "/var/lib/docker/*", "/tmp/newroot/*", "/var/tmp/newroot/*") or
  process.parent.name in ("jem", "vzctl")
)

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Process Capability Set via setcap Utility 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).