Environment Variables Detection Mechanism

Monitor and analyze environment variable operations to catch attacks using dynamic linker tricks, credential theft, or persistence through environment tampering.

Overview

Jibril tracks environment-related activity to detect abuse of dynamic linker variables, secret extraction from process environments, and persistence using environment files.

How It Works

Process Environment Tracking

• Use of dynamic linker variables
• Access to other processes’ environment files
• Other mechanisms of environment tampering

Contextual Analysis

Links environment to their context:

• What environment variables were set or used
• Who accessed or changed environments
• Correlation with related file access or execution patterns

Use Cases

Detection Capabilities

Dynamic Linker Attacks

• LD_PRELOAD or LD_LIBRARY_PATH hijacking
• Shared library preloading attacks

Process Tampering

• Runtime modification via environment
• Library/function hooking
• API interception

Credential Exposure

• Processes reading credentials, API keys, or tokens from other processes’ environments

Persistence

• Boot or login persistence through /etc/ld.so.preload or shell configs
• Automatic library loading

Detections

• Dynamic Linker Attacks