Name:Windows Potato Privilege Escalation Tool Execution id:cfde2a20-3737-4760-8498-16e1e6d1672d version:2 date:None author:Raven Tait, Splunk status:production type:TTP Description:Detects execution of known Potato-family privilege escalation tools based on original file name, process name, or binary path.
A tool class that has been a dominant post-compromise privilege escalation method for over a decade and remains actively used by ransomware operators, red teams, and nation-state actors alike.
The Potato family exploits Windows token impersonation and privilege abuse to escalate from a service account, IIS worker process, or other restricted context to SYSTEM.
The core abuse chain across most variants involves tricking a SYSTEM-level process into authenticating to an attacker-controlled endpoint, capturing that authentication, and impersonating the resulting SYSTEM token to spawn an elevated process. Data_source:
-Sysmon EventID 1
-Windows Event Log Security 4688
-CrowdStrike ProcessRollup2
search:| tstats summariesonly=false allow_old_summaries=true count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime
how_to_implement:The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the `Processes` node of the `Endpoint` data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process. known_false_positives:Some legitimate security tools or authorized pentesting software may use potato privilege escalation methods for testing purposes. Filter alerts based on approved security testing activities. References: -https://hideandsec.sh/books/windows-sNL/page/in-the-potato-family-i-want-them-all drilldown_searches: earliest_offset:'$info_min_time$' latest_offset:'$info_max_time$' name:'View the detection results for - "$user$" and "$dest$"' search:'%original_detection_search% | search user = "$user$" dest = "$dest$"' name:'View risk events for the last 7 days for - "$user$" and "$dest$"' search:'| from datamodel Risk.All_Risk | search normalized_risk_object IN ("$user$", "$dest$") | stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime values(search_name) as "Search Name" values(risk_message) as "Risk Message" values(analyticstories) as "Analytic Stories" values(annotations._all) as "Annotations" values(annotations.mitre_attack.mitre_tactic) as "ATT&CK Tactics" by normalized_risk_object | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`' earliest_offset:'7d' latest_offset:'0' analytic_story:['Windows Privilege Escalation']
