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Linux Apparmor Bypass Via Aaexec

The following analytic detects aa-exec being used to launch a binary under the trinity, chrome, or flatpak AppArmor profiles where the executed target is not the legitimate application those profiles are intended to…

Description

The following analytic detects aa-exec being used to launch a binary under the trinity, chrome, or flatpak AppArmor profiles where the executed target is not the legitimate application those profiles are intended to confine. This behavior is consistent with abuse of userns,-carrying AppArmor profiles to bypass Ubuntu's unprivileged user namespace restrictions as seen in the CVE-2026-46331 privilege escalation exploit. The analytic flags execution when the target command following -- is invoked via a relative path, resolves outside standard trusted install directories for these applications, or shares the same binary name as the calling parent process. Adversaries and red teams may abuse this technique to escalate privileges by tricking aa-exec into granting a namespace-creation capability to an arbitrary binary rather than the trusted application the profile was written for.

Detection logic

Detection requirements

Platform
ContainersLinuxmacOSWindows

The rule states no platform. This is derived from the ATT&CK technique it maps to.

Log source category
sysmon_for_linux_eventid_1

Known benign triggers

  • Chrome, Flatpak, and the trinity profile are never legitimately re-executed with extraneious arguments from a non-browser binary path

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