Linux Auditd Possible Setuid Execve Privesc — Detection Rule
The following detects privilege escalation via execve (syscall 59) where a process transitions from a non-root uid to euid=0 without a corresponding successful PAM authentication event (USER_AUTH, USER_ACCT, or CRED_ACQ) in the same audit session. Legitimate privilege elevation mechanisms such as sudo, su, and pkexec authenticate through PAM and generate these audit records tied to the session ID before granting elevated privileges. The absence of a matching successful PAM event alongside an effective UID change to root is anomalous and may indicate exploitation of a setuid binary, a kernel vulnerability, or another mechanism used to escalate privileges outside the normal authentication flow.