Malicious Looney Tunables Privilege Escalation Exploit by Kinsing (via process_creation)

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
linux
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-06
Updated
2026-09-06

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Defense Evasion

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the Kinsing actor running the gnu-acme.py exploit for CVE-2023-4911 Looney Tunables to escalate privileges through the glibc dynamic loader after gaining a foothold via PHPUnit. The gnu-acme.py filename is specific to this observed intrusion.

Related detections9 linkedT1068 — drag to rearrange
Malicious Payload Download From copy.fail Exploit Host on Linux (via process_creation)
Suspicious su Execution From Uncommon Parent Process on Linux (via process_creation)
Possible noPac sAMAccountName Spoofing via Machine Account Rename
Possible macOS TCC Bypass via mdimport Loading Custom Spotlight Importer
Suspicious CLFS Base Log File Created in SkyPDF ProgramData Path during Zero-Day Exploitation (via file_event)
Malicious Cisco SD-WAN Tenant List Upload Script Execution (via process_creation)
Possible Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Tenant Upload Exploitation CVE-2026-20245 (via process_creation)
Suspicious Modification of CloudFiles BlockedApps Policy via registry_set
Suspicious Command Shell Spawned by lmadmin License Manager via process_creation
Malicious Looney Tunables Privilege Escalation Exploit by Kinsing (via process_creation)
Pivot detection · T1068 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.