Exploitation for Privilege Escalation

What the technique is

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in order to elevate privileges. Exploitation of a software vulnerability occurs when an adversary takes advantage of a programming error in an application, service, within the operating system software, or kernel itself to execute adversary-controlled code. Security constructions, such as permission levels, will often hinder access to information and use of certain techniques. Adversaries will likely need to perform privilege escalation to include use of software exploitation to circumvent those restrictions. When initially gaining access to a device, an adversary may be operating within a lower privileged process which will prevent them from accessing certain resources on the system. Vulnerabilities may exist, usually in operating system components and applications running at higher permissions, that can be exploited to gain higher levels of access on the system. This could enable someone to move from unprivileged or user- level permission to root permissions depending on the component that is vulnerable.

What MITRE says you would watch

• AN1758

  From the defender’s perspective, this strategy correlates signals that a previously unprivileged Android app or process has gained higher privileges through exploitation rather than normal OS or MDM flows. Observable behaviors include: (1) unprivileged app processes issuing sensitive syscalls or accessing privileged device interfaces, (2) bursts of SELinux denials followed by an unexpected domain or permission change, (3) creation of new processes running with system or root UID whose lineage traces back to an app sandbox path, and (4) crashes or abnormal restarts of privileged system services followed shortly by a new connection or binder interaction from the same low-privileged app. […]

• AN1759

  Correlates app sandbox escape attempts via unsigned binary execution, mmap memory permission changes (RWX), and sandbox profile violations. Detection chain includes app leveraging JIT/JSC to execute shellcode or triggering kernel exploit via crafted IOKit or Mach port abuse.