Apple Scripting Execution with Administrator Privilegesedit

Identifies execution of the Apple script interpreter (osascript) without a password prompt and with administrator privileges.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • auditbeat-*
  • logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • macOS
  • Threat Detection
  • Execution
  • Privilege Escalation

Version: 2 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guideedit

## Config

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.

Rule queryedit

process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.name : "osascript" and process.command_line :
"osascript*with administrator privileges"

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 2 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only