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Suspicious SUID Binary Execution

Detects execution of SUID binaries that may be used for privilege escalation under the root effective user when the real user and parent user are not root, combined with minimal argument counts and suspicious parent context (interpreters, short shell -c invocations, or parents running from user-writable paths) to indicate potential misuse of SUID binaries for privilege escalation.

Rule type: eql
Rule indices:

  • logs-endpoint.events.process*

Rule Severity: high
Risk Score: 73
Runs every:
Searches indices from: now-6m
Maximum alerts per execution: 100
References:

Tags:

  • Data Source: Elastic Defend
  • Domain: Endpoint
  • OS: Linux
  • Use Case: Threat Detection
  • Tactic: Privilege Escalation
  • Resources: Investigation Guide

Version: 2
Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Confirm whether the non-root real user should be invoking SUID binaries as root. Review the parent process tree, script path, and any preceding download or decode activity.

  • Inspect process.parent.command_line and working directory for obfuscation or one-liners.
  • Check authentication and sudoers policy for the user.
  • Pivot on the host for additional privilege escalation or persistence in the same session.
  • If unauthorized, contain the session, revoke elevated access, and review sudoers and polkit policy for tampering.
process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action == "exec" and (
  (process.user.id == "0" and process.real_user.id != "0" and process.parent.user.id != "0") or
  (process.group.id == "0" and process.real_group.id != "0" and process.parent.group.id != "0")
) and
(
  (process.name in ("su", "passwd", "unix_chkpwd") and process.args_count <= 2) or
  (
    process.name in ("sudo", "pkexec", "fusermount", "fusermount3", "mount", "umount", "newgrp", "chsh") and
    process.args_count == 1
  ) or
  process.name in (
    "sudoedit", "gpasswd", "chfn", "polkit-agent-helper-1", "dbus-daemon-launch-helper", "ssh-keysign",
    "pam_extrausers_chkpwd", "expiry", "chage", "crontab", "wall", "bsd-write", "ssh-agent", "ping",
    "ping6", "traceroute", "mtr", "ntfs-3g", "Xorg.wrap", "chrome-sandbox", "bwrap"
  )
) and
(
  process.parent.name like (".*", "python*", "perl*", "ruby*", "lua*", "php*", "node", "deno", "bun", "java") or
  process.parent.executable like ("./*", "/tmp/*", "/var/tmp/*", "/dev/shm/*", "/run/user/*", "/var/run/user/*", "/home/*/*") or
  (
    process.parent.name in ("bash", "dash", "sh", "tcsh", "csh", "zsh", "ksh", "fish", "mksh") and
    process.parent.args in ("-c", "-cl", "-lc", "--command", "-ic", "-ci", "-bash", "-sh", "-zsh", "-dash", "-fish", "-ksh", "-mksh") and
    process.parent.args_count <= 4
  )
)

Framework: MITRE ATT&CK