Launch Agent Creation or Modification and Immediate Loadingedit
An adversary can establish persistence by installing a new launch agent that executes at login by using launchd or launchctl to load a plist into the appropriate directories.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- auditbeat-*
- logs-endpoint.events.*
Severity: low
Risk score: 21
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
- Persistence
Version: 100 (version history)
Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0
Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.5.0
Rule authors: Elastic
Rule license: Elastic License v2
Potential false positivesedit
Trusted applications persisting via LaunchAgent
Rule queryedit
sequence by host.id with maxspan=1m [file where event.type !=
"deletion" and file.path : ("/System/Library/LaunchAgents/*",
"/Library/LaunchAgents/*", "/Users/*/Library/LaunchAgents/*") ]
[process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.name == "launchctl" and process.args == "load"]
Threat mappingedit
Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
-
Tactic:
- Name: Persistence
- ID: TA0003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/
-
Technique:
- Name: Create or Modify System Process
- ID: T1543
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1543/
Rule version historyedit
- Version 100 (8.5.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
sequence by host.id with maxspan=1m [file where event.type != "deletion" and file.path : ("/System/Library/LaunchAgents/*", "/Library/LaunchAgents/*", "/Users/*/Library/LaunchAgents/*") ] [process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.name == "launchctl" and process.args == "load"]
-
- Version 3 (8.4.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 2 (7.12.0 release)
-
- Formatting only