Analytics Story: MacOS Privilege Escalation

Description

Monitor for and investigate activities that may be associated with a MacOS privilege-escalation attack, including unusual processes running on endpoints, schedule task, services, setuid, root execution and more.

Why it matters

Privilege escalation is a "land-and-expand" technique, wherein an adversary gains an initial foothold on a host and then exploits its weaknesses to increase his privileges. The motivation is simple: certain actions on a MacOS machine--such as installing software--may require higher-level privileges than those the attacker initially acquired. By increasing his privilege level, the attacker can gain the control required to carry out his malicious ends. This Analytic Story provides searches to detect and investigate behaviors that attackers may use to elevate their privileges in your environment.

Detections

Name ▲▼ Technique ▲▼ Type ▲▼
MacOS Gatekeeper Bypass Gatekeeper Bypass Anomaly
MacOS Kextload Usage Create or Modify System Process TTP
MacOS Keychains Dumped Keychain TTP

Data Sources

Name ▲▼ Platform ▲▼ Sourcetype ▲▼ Source ▲▼
Osquery Results Other osquery:results osquery

References


Source: GitHub | Version: 1