Suspicious Hidden Child Process of Launchd

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Identifies the execution of a launchd child process with a hidden file. An adversary can establish persistence by installing a new logon item, launch agent, or daemon that executes upon login.

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
  • Persistence
  • Defense Evasion

Version: 2 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.4.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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event.category:process and event.type:(start or process_started) and
process.name:.* and process.parent.executable:/sbin/launchd

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 2 (8.4.0 release)
  • Formatting only