Modification of Environment Variable via Launchctl

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Modification of Environment Variable via Launchctl

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Identifies modifications to an environment variable using the built-in launchctl command. Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking certain environment variables to load arbitrary libraries or bypass certain restrictions.

Rule type: query

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
  • Defense Evasion

Version: 1

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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event.category:process and event.type:start and process.name:launchctl
and process.args:(setenv and not (JAVA*_HOME or RUNTIME_JAVA_HOME or
DBUS_LAUNCHD_SESSION_BUS_SOCKET or ANT_HOME))

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM