Adversaries may circumvent mechanisms designed to control elevate privileges to gain higher-level permissions. Most modern systems contain native elevation control mechanisms that are intended to limit privileges that a user can perform on a machine. Authorization has to be granted to specific users in order to perform tasks that can be considered of higher risk. An adversary can perform several methods to take advantage of built-in control mechanisms in order to escalate privileges on a system.
View in MITRE ATT&CK®Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
AC-16 | Security and Privacy Attributes | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
AC-02 | Account Management | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
AC-03 | Access Enforcement | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
AC-05 | Separation of Duties | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
AC-06 | Least Privilege | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
CA-07 | Continuous Monitoring | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
CA-08 | Penetration Testing | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
CM-02 | Baseline Configuration | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
CM-05 | Access Restrictions for Change | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
CM-06 | Configuration Settings | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
CM-07 | Least Functionality | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
CM-08 | System Component Inventory | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
IA-02 | Identification and Authentication (organizational Users) | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
RA-05 | Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
SC-18 | Mobile Code | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
SC-34 | Non-modifiable Executable Programs | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
SI-12 | Information Management and Retention | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
SI-16 | Memory Protection | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
SI-03 | Malicious Code Protection | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
SI-04 | System Monitoring | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
SI-07 | Software, Firmware, and Information Integrity | Protects | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism | |
PUR-AS-E5 | Audit Solutions | Technique Scores | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism |
Comments
Microsoft Purview auditing solutions provide an integrated solution to help organizations effectively respond to security events, forensic investigations, internal investigations, and compliance obligations. Thousands of user and admin operations performed in dozens of Microsoft 365 services and solutions are captured, recorded, and retained in your organization's unified audit log. Audit records for these events are searchable by security ops, IT admins, insider risk teams, and compliance and legal investigators in your organization. This capability provides visibility into the activities performed across your Microsoft 365 organization.
Microsoft's Audit Solutions detects Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism attacks due to it's DataInsightsRestApiAudit AuditLogRecord type which logs cloud API calls to assume, create, or impersonate additional roles, policies, and permissions.
License Requirements:
Microsoft 365 E3 and E5
References
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DEF-SecScore-E3 | Secure Score | Technique Scores | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism |
Comments
Microsoft Secure Score is a measurement of an organization's security posture, with a higher number indicating more recommended actions taken. It can be found at Microsoft Secure Score in the Microsoft Defender portal.
Following the Secure Score recommendations can protect your organization from threats. From a centralized dashboard in the Microsoft Defender portal, organizations can monitor and work on the security of their Microsoft 365 identities, apps, and devices. Your score is updated in real time to reflect the information presented in the visualizations and recommended action pages. Secure Score also syncs daily to receive system data about your achieved points for each action.
To help you find the information you need more quickly, Microsoft recommended actions are organized into groups:
Identity (Microsoft Entra accounts & roles)
Device (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, known as Microsoft Secure Score for Devices)
Apps (email and cloud apps, including Office 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps)
Data (through Microsoft Information Protection)
References
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DO365-AG-E5 | App Governance | Technique Scores | T1548 | Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism |
Comments
App governance in Defender for Cloud Apps is a set of security and policy management capabilities designed for OAuth-enabled apps registered on Microsoft Entra ID, Google, and Salesforce. App governance delivers visibility, remediation, and governance into how these apps and their users access, use, and share sensitive data in Microsoft 365 and other cloud platforms through actionable insights and automated policy alerts and actions. App governance also enables you to see which user-installed OAuth applications have access to data on Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce. It tells you what permissions the apps have and which users have granted access to their accounts. App governance insights enable you to make informed decisions around blocking or restricting apps that present significant risk to your organization
App Governance Protects against Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism attacks due to the governance feature where admins can create proactive or reactive policies to protect your users from using noncompliant or malicious apps and limiting the access of risky apps to your data.
License Requirements:
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
References
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Technique ID | Technique Name | Number of Mappings |
---|---|---|
T1548.002 | Bypass User Account Control | 12 |
T1548.003 | Sudo and Sudo Caching | 13 |
T1548.001 | Setuid and Setgid | 3 |
T1548.005 | Temporary Elevated Cloud Access | 7 |
T1548.004 | Elevated Execution with Prompt | 11 |