Potential Privilege Escalation via PKEXECedit

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.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • logs-endpoint.events.*
  • endgame-*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Domain: Endpoint
  • OS: Linux
  • Use Case: Threat Detection
  • Tactic: Privilege Escalation
  • Data Source: Elastic Endgame
  • Use Case: Vulnerability

Version: 104

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule queryedit

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

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM