Query: SIEM correlation: privilege escalation activity consistent with Bypass User Account Control
Matching passage: T1548.002 Bypass User Account Control. Tactics: privilege escalation. Description: Adversaries may bypass UAC mechanisms to elevate process privileges on system. Windows User Account Control (UAC) allows a program to elevate its privileges (tracked as integrity levels ranging from low to high) to perform a task under administrator-level permissions, possibly by prompting the user for confirmation. The impact to the user ranges from denying the operation under high enforcement to allowing the user to perform the action if they are in the local administrators group and click through the prompt or allowing them to enter an administrator password to complete the action.(Citation: TechNet How UAC Works) If the UAC protection level of a computer is set to anything but the highest level, certain Windows programs can elevate privileges or execute some elevated [Component Object Model](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1559/001) objects without prompting the user through the UAC notification box.(Citation: TechNet Inside UAC)(Citation: MSDN COM Elevation) An example of this is use of [Rundll32](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/011) to load a specifically crafted DLL which loads an auto-elevated [Component Object Model](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1559/001) object and performs a file operation in a protected directory which would typically require elevated access. Malicious software may also be injected into a trusted process to gain elevated privileges without prompting a user.(Citation: Davidson Windows) Many methods have been discovered to bypass UAC. The Github readme page for UACME contains an extensive list of methods(Citation: Github UACMe) that have been discovered and implemented, but may not be a comprehensive list of bypasses. Additional bypass methods are regularly discovered and some used in the wild, such as: * <code>eventvwr.exe</code> can auto-elevate and execute a specified binary or script.(Citation: enigma0x3 Fileless UAC Bypass)(Citation: Fortinet Fareit) Another bypass is possible through some lateral movement techn
Near-miss passage: T1548.003 Sudo and Sudo Caching. Tactics: privilege escalation. Description: Adversaries may perform sudo caching and/or use the sudoers file to elevate privileges. Adversaries may do this to execute commands as other users or spawn processes with higher privileges. Within Linux and MacOS systems, sudo (sometimes referred to as "superuser do") allows users to perform commands from terminals with elevated privileges and to control who can perform these commands on the system. The <code>sudo</code> command "allows a system administrator to delegate authority to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root or another user while providing an audit trail of the commands and their arguments."(Citation: sudo man page 2018) Since sudo was made for the system administrator, it has some useful configuration features such as a <code>timestamp_timeout</code>, which is the amount of time in minutes between instances of <code>sudo</code> before it will re-prompt for a password. This is because <code>sudo</code> has the ability to cache credentials for a period of time. Sudo creates (or touches) a file at <code>/var/db/sudo</code> with a timestamp of when sudo was last run to determine this timeout. Additionally, there is a <code>tty_tickets</code> variable that treats each new tty (terminal session) in isolation. This means that, for example, the sudo timeout of one tty will not affect another tty (you will have to type the password again). The sudoers file, <code>/etc/sudoers</code>, describes which users can run which commands and from which terminals. This also describes which commands users can run as other users or groups. This provides the principle of least privilege such that users are running in their lowest possible permissions for most of the time and only elevate to other users or permissions as needed, typically by prompting for a password. However, the sudoers file can also specify when to not prompt users for passwords with a line like <code>user1 ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL</code>.(Citation: OSX.Dok