Suspicious Modification of Privileged Authentication Binaries via Kernel LPE

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1068Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects tampering of the setuid su binary or the local passwd database, the payload step used by the Dirty Frag Linux kernel local privilege escalation chain (CVE-2026-43284 and CVE-2026-43500). Attackers abuse ESP and RxRPC kernel flaws to overwrite page-cache backed authentication files and gain root. Unexpected writes to these files indicate an in-progress LPE and warrant immediate triage.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1068 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Modification of Privileged Authentication Binaries via Kernel LPE

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.

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