Home/ATT&CK Technique/Elevated Execution with Prompt
ATT&CK Technique

Elevated Execution with Prompt

T1548.004 · privilege-escalation

Adversaries may leverage the AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges API to escalate privileges by prompting the user for credentials. The purpose of this API is to give application developers an easy way to perform operations with root privileges, such as for application installation or updating. This API does not validate that the program requesting root privileges comes from a reputable source or has been maliciously modified.

Although this API is deprecated, it still fully functions in the latest releases of macOS. When calling this API, the user will be prompted to enter their credentials but no checks on the origin or integrity of the program are made. The program calling the API may also load world writable files which can be modified to perform malicious behavior with elevated privileges.

Adversaries may abuse AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges to obtain root privileges in order to install malicious software on victims and install persistence mechanisms. This technique may be combined with Masquerading to trick the user into granting escalated privileges to malicious code. This technique has also been shown to work by modifying legitimate programs present on the machine that make use of this API.

macOS
◆

Actors Using This

1
north_koreaSapphire Sleet
▣

Mitigations

1
MITRE ATT&CK mitigations - vendor-agnostic guidance for reducing exposure to this technique.
M1038Execution Prevention

Prevent the execution of unauthorized or malicious code on systems by implementing application control, script blocking, and other execution prevention mechanisms. This ensures that only trusted and authorized code is executed, reducing the risk of malware and unauthorized actions.

Application Control
  • Use Case: Use tools like AppLocker or Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) to create whitelists of authorized applications and block unauthorized ones. On Linux, use tools like SELinux or AppArmor to define mandatory access control policies for application execution.
  • Implementation: Allow only digitally signed or pre-approved applications to execute on servers and endpoints. (e.g., `New-AppLockerPolicy -PolicyType Enforced -FilePath "C:\Policies\AppLocker.
xml"`) Script Blocking
  • Use Case: Use script control mechanisms to block unauthorized execution of scripts, such as PowerShell or JavaScript. Web Browsers: Use browser extensions or settings to block JavaScript execution from untrusted sources.
  • Implementation: Configure PowerShell to enforce Constrained Language Mode for non-administrator users. (e.g.
, Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned) Executable Blocking
  • Use Case: Prevent execution of binaries from suspicious locations, such as %TEMP% or %APPDATA% directories.
  • Implementation: Block execution of .exe, .bat, or .ps1 files from user-writable directories.
Dynamic Analysis Prevention
  • Use Case: Use behavior-based execution prevention tools to identify and block malicious activity in real time.
  • Implemenation: Employ EDR solutions that analyze runtime behavior and block suspicious code execution.
◈

Detection Coverage

0/6 layers
Coverage across standard detection surfaces. Rows marked none have no rule of that type mapped. Some are real blind spots worth closing; others are simply not applicable to this technique (e.g. YARA matches malware files, not network behaviour).
Behavioral / log (Sigma) none
Analytics (MITRE CAR) none
Runtime / container (Falco) none
File / malware (YARA) none
Network (Suricata/Snort) none
Vuln scan (Nuclei) none
▣

Comply & Defend

NIST 800-53CM-02, CM-06, CM-07, CM-08, SC-18, SC-34, SI-03, SI-04, SI-07, SI-12, SI-16
D3FEND5 defensive techniques
Intelligence Graph · click any node to traverse
CVETechnique ActorTool Family
drag to reposition · click any node to traverse · button top-right enlarges
External lookups - second-class, for what we don’t hold ourselves
MITRE ATT&CKAtomic Red Teamcar (MITRE)
Vulnerabilities
CISA KEV catalog
CWE weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns
Package vulnerabilities
Threat intelligence
Threat actors
Tools & malware
ATT&CK techniques
IOCs
Detection & defense
Sigma rules
YARA rules
Atomic Red Team tests
D3FEND countermeasures
Compliance
NIST 800-53
ISO 27001:2022
SOC 2 TSC
PCI-DSS v4.0
CIS Controls v8.1
About
All capabilities
Live statistics
Data sources
Privacy policy
Terms of service
threatengine.sh  ·  Open-source threat intelligence platform  ·  100+ authoritative sources  ·  Every fact traces to its origin