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ATT&CK techniquePrivilege Escalation

T1548 Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism

Privilege EscalationEnterprise

As of 2026-10-05, T1548 (Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism) appears in 281 tracked threats, first reported 2026-02-02 and most recently 2026-10-02, with linked actors including Nightmare Eclipse, TeamPCP, APT38; it most often appears alongside T1059 (Command and Scripting Interpreter).

Tracked threats
281115 critical, 152 high, 13 medium
First seen
2026-02-02
Last seen
2026-10-02
Threat actors
54In the threats using it
Detection rules
235Blue tier and above

Data as of:

Activity timeline

T1548 first appeared in tracked threats on and was most recently reported on . The busiest month was 2026-07 with 113 reports, and 281 of the 281 threats were reported in the twelve months to 2026-10.

How adversaries use it

T1548 Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism is catalogued by MITRE ATT&CK under the Privilege Escalation tactic in the Enterprise matrix. Threadlinqs maps 281 of 2623 tracked threats (10.7%) to it; by severity that is 115 critical, 152 high, 13 medium.

Threats that use T1548 most often also use T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter (190 threats), T1005 Data from Local System (161 threats), T1082 System Information Discovery (159 threats), T1071 Application Layer Protocol (134 threats), T1685 Disable or Modify Tools (134 threats). These are the techniques an intrusion set tends to chain with it, so they are the natural next places to look when it is observed.

54 tracked threat actors appear in the threats that use T1548; the most frequent are Nightmare Eclipse (5), TeamPCP (5), APT38 (4), Chaotic Eclipse (4), Black Basta (3).

Mitigations

MITRE ATT&CK lists 8 mitigations for T1548.

Data sources

Telemetry that can reveal T1548, per MITRE ATT&CK.

  • Command — Command Execution
  • File — File Metadata, File Modification
  • Process — OS API Execution, Process Creation, Process Metadata
  • User Account — User Account Modification
  • Windows Registry — Windows Registry Key Modification

Threat actors using it

Tracked threats

The 30 most recent of 281 tracked threats that use T1548.

Detection coverage

Threadlinqs maintains 235 detection rules mapped to T1548 (SPL 78, KQL 86, Sigma 69, other 2). Rule content is available to Blue tier accounts and above; this page shows counts only.

235 detection rules (SPL/KQL/Sigma) · Blue and above. Compare plans

Sub-techniques