IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
« Lateral Tool Transfer LaunchDaemon Creation or Modification and Immediate Loading »
Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [7.16] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

Launch Agent Creation or Modification and Immediate Loading

edit

Launch Agent Creation or Modification and Immediate Loading

edit

An adversary can establish persistence by installing a new launch agent that executes at login by using launchd or launchctl to load a plist into the appropriate directories.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

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: 2 (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

Potential false positives

edit

Trusted applications persisting via LaunchAgent

Rule query

edit
sequence by host.id with maxspan=1m [file where event.type !=
"deletion" and file.path : ("/System/Library/LaunchAgents/*",
"/Library/LaunchAgents/*", "/Users/*/Library/LaunchAgents/*") ]
[process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.name == "launchctl" and process.args == "load"]

Threat mapping

edit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

edit
Version 2 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
« Lateral Tool Transfer LaunchDaemon Creation or Modification and Immediate Loading »