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Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [8.4] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

Launch Agent Creation or Modification and Immediate Loading

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Launch Agent Creation or Modification and Immediate Loading

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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: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.4.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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Trusted applications persisting via LaunchAgent

Rule query

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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

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 3 (8.4.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
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