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Linux Suspicious Namespace Creation

Splunk Security Content

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Summary
This analytic detects a two-step Linux privilege escalation pattern: an unprivileged user invokes the unshare syscall with user namespace flags, followed within 120 seconds by a root-owned shell or interpreter spawning under the same parent process. It correlates Linux Auditd syscall telemetry (unshare with namespace flags) with Sysmon for Linux EventID 1 process creation events to identify the characteristic sequence leveraged by user-namespace-based exploits such as DirtyFrag. By matching the unshare event’s namespace flags (e.g., CLONE_NEWUSER, CLONE_NEWNET, CLONE_NEWPID) and the subsequent spawning of a root process (su, sudo, pkexec, etc.) from the same parent, the rule flags potential privilege escalation attempts that bypass traditional isolation. The search normalizes fields to CIM-compatible names, computes elapsed time between events, and groups results by destination host, process and syscall, producing a concise alert: “Suspicious namespace created on dest indicating possible privilege escalation via DirtyFrag.” This rule maps to MITRE ATT&CK technique T1068 (Exploitation for Privilege Escalation) and is designed to surface kernel-level abuse that leverages user namespaces to escalate privileges on Linux endpoints.
Categories
  • Linux
  • Endpoint
Data Sources
  • Windows Registry
  • Script
  • Image
  • Process
  • File
  • Drive
  • Sensor Health
  • Kernel
  • Driver
  • Volume
  • Cloud Service
  • Network Traffic
  • Scheduled Job
  • Firewall
  • Module
  • Command
  • Logon Session
  • Network Share
  • Application Log
  • WMI
  • Kernel
  • Drive
  • Snapshot
  • Certificate
  • Volume
  • Process
  • Cloud Storage
  • Internet Scan
  • Web Credential
  • Named Pipe
  • Domain Name
  • Service
  • Active Directory
  • Container
  • Pod
  • Instance
  • User Account
  • Domain Name
  • Certificate
  • Module
  • Process
ATT&CK Techniques
  • T1068
Created: 2026-06-12