Detection: Linux APT Privilege Escalation

Description

The following analytic detects the use of the Advanced Package Tool (APT) with elevated privileges via sudo on Linux systems. It leverages Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) telemetry to identify processes where APT commands are executed with sudo rights. This activity is significant because it indicates a user can run system commands as root, potentially leading to unauthorized root shell access. If confirmed malicious, this could allow an attacker to escalate privileges, execute arbitrary commands, and gain full control over the affected system, posing a severe security risk.

Search

1
2| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process="*apt*" AND Processes.process="*APT::Update::Pre-Invoke::*" AND Processes.process="*sudo*" by Processes.dest Processes.user Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.parent_process_id Processes.process_guid 
3| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
4| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
5| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
6| `linux_apt_privilege_escalation_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
Sysmon for Linux EventID 1	Linux	'sysmon:linux'	'Syslog:Linux-Sysmon/Operational'

Macros Used

Annotations

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Implementation

The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the Processes node of the Endpoint data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process.

Known False Positives

False positives may be present, filter as needed.

Associated Analytic Story

• Linux Living Off The Land

• Linux Privilege Escalation

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

References

• https://gtfobins.github.io/gtfobins/apt/

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/what-is-apt

Detection Testing

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

Source: GitHub | Version: 4