Suspicious Kubernetes SelfSubjectAccessReview Permission Enumeration

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
kubernetes
Service
audit
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-15
Updated
2026-10-15

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of SelfSubjectAccessReview or SelfSubjectRulesReview objects which are used to enumerate the permissions granted to the current identity as described in NCC Group Kubernetes detection engineering research. Adversaries query their own effective RBAC access to plan privilege escalation and lateral movement so bursts of these reviews should be investigated.

Related detections7 linkedT1613 — drag to rearrange
Malicious Kubernetes Reconnaissance Tooling Activity
Suspicious Container Environment Reconnaissance in Serverless Build
Suspicious Kubernetes Secret Enumeration via kubectl
Suspicious Kubernetes API Request From Anonymous User
Suspicious Kubernetes Secret and Permission Enumeration via kubectl (via process_creation)
Suspicious Anonymous Access to Kubernetes API Server via Audit Log
Kubernetes audit log signals potential tool and shell enumeration/execution activity
Suspicious Kubernetes SelfSubjectAccessReview Permission Enumeration
Pivot detection · T1613 · 7 related

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