COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-234

Hijacking a privileged process

An adversary gains control of a process that is assigned elevated privileges in order to execute arbitrary code with those privileges. Some processes are assigned elevated privileges on an operating system, usually through association with a particular user, group, or role. If an attacker can hijack this process, they will be able to assume its level of privilege in order to execute their own code.

Abstraction

Standard

Typical severity

Medium

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary gains control of a process that is assigned elevated privileges in order to execute arbitrary code with those privileges. Some processes are assigned elevated privileges on an operating system, usually through association with a particular user, group, or role. If an attacker can hijack this process, they will be able to assume its level of privilege in order to execute their own code.

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

1

Explore

Find process with elevated priveleges

The adversary probes for processes running with elevated privileges.

Techniques used

  • On Windows, use the process explorer's security tab to see if a process is running with administror privileges.
  • On Linux, use the ps command to view running processes and pipe the output to a search for a particular user, or the root user.
2

Experiment

Find vulnerability in running process

The adversary looks for a vulnerability in the running process that would allow for arbitrary code execution with the privilege of the running process.

Techniques used

  • Look for improper input validation
  • Look for a buffer overflow which may be exploited if an adversary can inject unvalidated data.
  • Utilize system utilities that support process control that have been inadequately secured
3

Exploit

Execute arbitrary code

The adversary exploits the vulnerability that they have found and hijacks the running process.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The targeted process or operating system must contain a bug that allows attackers to hijack the targeted process.

Skills required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Resources required

  • None: No specialized resources are required to execute this type of attack.