Suspicious Automator Workflows Execution

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Identifies the execution of the Automator Workflows process followed by a network connection from it’s XPC service. Adversaries may drop a custom workflow template that hosts malicious JavaScript for Automation (JXA) code as an alternative to using osascript.

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

Version: 100 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.5.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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sequence by host.id with maxspan=30s [process where event.type in
("start", "process_started") and process.name == "automator"]
[network where process.name:"com.apple.automator.runner"]

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 100 (8.5.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (8.4.0 release)
  • Formatting only