Elastic Security Detection Rules

Potential Sudo Token Manipulation via Process Injection

Last updated 12 days ago on 2024-12-10
Created a year ago on 2023-07-31

About

This rule detects potential sudo token manipulation attacks through process injection by monitoring the use of a debugger (gdb) process followed by a successful uid change event during the execution of the sudo process. A sudo token manipulation attack is performed by injecting into a process that has a valid sudo token, which can then be used by attackers to activate their own sudo token. This attack requires ptrace to be enabled in conjunction with the existence of a living process that has a valid sudo token with the same uid as the current user.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationData Source: Elastic Defend
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Process Injection (T1055)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism (T1548)(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.*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
sequence by host.id, process.session_leader.entity_id with maxspan=15s
[ process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action == "exec" and 
  process.name == "gdb" and process.user.id != "0" and process.group.id != "0" ]
[ process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.action == "uid_change" and event.type == "change" and 
  process.name == "sudo" and process.user.id == "0" and process.group.id == "0" ]

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential Sudo Token Manipulation via Process Injection 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).