Creation of Hidden Launch Agent or Daemon

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Identifies the creation of a hidden launch agent or daemon. An adversary may establish persistence by installing a new launch agent or daemon which executes at login.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5m

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
  • Defense Evasion

Version: 5

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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## Setup

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 query

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file where event.type != "deletion" and
  file.path :
  (
    "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/.*.plist",
    "/Library/LaunchAgents/.*.plist",
    "/Users/*/Library/LaunchAgents/.*.plist",
    "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/.*.plist",
    "/Library/LaunchDaemons/.*.plist"
  )

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM