Imported from Undermybelt/hermes-skills (skills/red-teaming/anthropic-cybersecurity-skills/skills/prvlg-escltn-attempts/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add Undermybelt/hermes-skills --skill prvlg-escltn-attempts. Copyright stays with the author (Apache-2.0).

Detecting Privilege Escalation Attempts

Name: prvlg-escltn-attempts
Author: Undermybelt

When to Use

When proactively hunting for indicators of detecting privilege escalation attempts in the environment
After threat intelligence indicates active campaigns using these techniques
During incident response to scope compromise related to these techniques
When EDR or SIEM alerts trigger on related indicators
During periodic security assessments and purple team exercises

Prerequisites

EDR platform with process and network telemetry (CrowdStrike, MDE, SentinelOne)
SIEM with relevant log data ingested (Splunk, Elastic, Sentinel)
Sysmon deployed with comprehensive configuration
Windows Security Event Log forwarding enabled
Threat intelligence feeds for IOC correlation

Workflow

Formulate Hypothesis: Define a testable hypothesis based on threat intelligence or ATT&CK gap analysis.
Identify Data Sources: Determine which logs and telemetry are needed to validate or refute the hypothesis.
Execute Queries: Run detection queries against SIEM and EDR platforms to collect relevant events.
Analyze Results: Examine query results for anomalies, correlating across multiple data sources.
Validate Findings: Distinguish true positives from false positives through contextual analysis.
Correlate Activity: Link findings to broader attack chains and threat actor TTPs.
Document and Report: Record findings, update detection rules, and recommend response actions.

Key Concepts

Concept	Description
T1134	Access Token Manipulation
T1548.002	UAC Bypass
T1068	Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
T1574.009	Unquoted Service Path

Tools & Systems

Tool	Purpose
CrowdStrike Falcon	EDR telemetry and threat detection
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint	Advanced hunting with KQL
Splunk Enterprise	SIEM log analysis with SPL queries
Elastic Security	Detection rules and investigation timeline
Sysmon	Detailed Windows event monitoring
Velociraptor	Endpoint artifact collection and hunting
Sigma Rules	Cross-platform detection rule format

Common Scenarios

Scenario 1: Potato exploit for SYSTEM token impersonation
Scenario 2: Fodhelper.exe UAC bypass technique
Scenario 3: PrintSpoofer privilege escalation from service to SYSTEM
Scenario 4: CVE kernel exploit for local privilege escalation

Output Format

Hunt ID: TH-DETECT-[DATE]-[SEQ]
Technique: T1134
Host: [Hostname]
User: [Account context]
Evidence: [Log entries, process trees, network data]
Risk Level: [Critical/High/Medium/Low]
Confidence: [High/Medium/Low]
Recommended Action: [Containment, investigation, monitoring]

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prvlg-escltn-attempts

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