Persistence via Login or Logout Hook

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Identifies use of the Defaults command to install a login or logoff hook in MacOS. An adversary may abuse this capability to establish persistence in an environment by inserting code to be executed at login or logout.

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
  • Persistence

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.name == "defaults" and process.args == "write" and
process.args in ("LoginHook", "LogoutHook")

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only