IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates
will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the
current release documentation.
Suspicious macOS MS Office Child Process
editSuspicious macOS MS Office Child Process
editIdentifies suspicious child processes of frequently targeted Microsoft Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel). These child processes are often launched during exploitation of Office applications or by documents with malicious macros.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- 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
- Initial Access
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
editprocess where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name:("Microsoft Word", "Microsoft PowerPoint", "Microsoft Excel") and process.name: ( "bash", "dash", "sh", "tcsh", "csh", "zsh", "ksh", "fish", "python*", "perl*", "php*", "osascript", "pwsh", "curl", "wget", "cp", "mv", "base64", "launchctl" ) and /* noisy false positives related to product version discovery and office errors reporting */ not process.args: ( "ProductVersion", "hw.model", "ioreg", "ProductName", "ProductUserVisibleVersion", "ProductBuildVersion", "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MERP*/Microsoft Error Reporting.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Error Reporting" )
Threat mapping
editFramework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
-
Tactic:
- Name: Initial Access
- ID: TA0001
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0001/
-
Technique:
- Name: Phishing
- ID: T1566
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1566/
Rule version history
edit- Version 100 (8.5.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name:("Microsoft Word", "Microsoft PowerPoint", "Microsoft Excel") and process.name: ( "bash", "dash", "sh", "tcsh", "csh", "zsh", "ksh", "fish", "python*", "perl*", "php*", "osascript", "pwsh", "curl", "wget", "cp", "mv", "base64", "launchctl" ) and /* noisy false positives related to product version discovery and office errors reporting */ not process.args: ( "ProductVersion", "hw.model", "ioreg", "ProductName", "ProductUserVisibleVersion", "ProductBuildVersion", "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MERP*/Microsoft Error Reporting.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Error Reporting" )
-
- Version 3 (8.4.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 2 (7.13.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name:("Microsoft Word", "Microsoft PowerPoint", "Microsoft Excel") and process.name: ( "bash", "dash", "sh", "tcsh", "csh", "zsh", "ksh", "fish", "python*", "perl*", "php*", "osascript", "pwsh", "curl", "wget", "cp", "mv", "base64", "launchctl" )
-