T1055.008sub-technique of T1055 Process Injection

Ptrace System Calls

Linuxnothing on this site yetT1055.008 on attack.mitre.org

Adversaries may inject malicious code into processes via ptrace (process trace) system calls in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. Ptrace system call injection is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process. Ptrace system call injection involves attaching to and modifying a running process.
MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

If this is happening now

Checklists and playbooks to open while the alert is still live.

Playbook for this stage

Cloud account compromise

Impossible travel, an unrecognised inbox rule, or a reported invoice-fraud attempt.

how MITRE says to see it

Detection Strategy for Ptrace-Based Process Injection on Linux

Detects ptrace-based process injection by correlating audit logs of ptrace syscalls, memory modifications (e.g., poketext, pokedata), and suspicious register manipulation on a target process not normally debugged by the originator.

what reduces it

M1040 Behavior Prevention on Endpoint. Some endpoint security solutions can be configured to block some types of process injection based on common sequences of behavior that occur during the injection process.
M1026 Privileged Account Management. Utilize Yama (ex: /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope) to mitigate ptrace based process injection by restricting the use of ptrace to privileged users only. Other mitigation controls involve the deployment of security kernel modules that provide advanced access control and process restrictions such as SELinux, grsecurity, and AppArmor.

the rest of T1055

T1055.001 Dynamic-link Library Injection · not covered yet
T1055.002 Portable Executable Injection · not covered yet
T1055.003 Thread Execution Hijacking · not covered yet
T1055.004 Asynchronous Procedure Call · not covered yet
T1055.005 Thread Local Storage · not covered yet
T1055.009 Proc Memory · not covered yet
T1055.011 Extra Window Memory Injection · not covered yet
T1055.012 Process Hollowing · not covered yet
T1055.013 Process Doppelgänging · not covered yet
T1055.014 VDSO Hijacking · not covered yet
T1055.015 ListPlanting · not covered yet

The description, detection analytics and mitigations are reproduced from MITRE ATT&CK, version 19.2, under its terms of use. The checklists, hunts, labs and everything else linked here are this site’s.