Suspicious SUID Bit Set on Binary from Container Context

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-19
Updated
2026-10-19

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → Defense Evasion
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the setuid bit being applied to a binary via chmod, a privilege escalation step used after container escapes to leave a root-owned SUID backdoor on the host. Creating a SUID binary provides a durable path back to root. Detecting this exposes privilege escalation and persistence following a breakout.

Related detections5 linkedT1548.001 — drag to rearrange
Suspicious SUID Binary Discovery via Find Perm 4000
Possible CopyFail Root Exploitation via Python Spawning SUID Shell (via process_creation)
Suspicious User and Network Namespace Creation via unshare on Linux
Linux auth logs: pkexec and XAUTHORITY strings indicating PwnKit (CVE-2021-4034) attempt
Linux process activity: chown root and setuid/setgid chmod flags
Suspicious SUID Bit Set on Binary from Container Context
Pivot detection · T1548.001 · 5 related

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