Elastic Security Detection Rules

Launch Service Creation and Immediate Loading

Last updated 23 days ago on 2025-04-21
Created 4 years ago on 2020-12-07

About

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.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: PersistenceData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

Persistence (TA0003)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Create or Modify System Process (T1543)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
Trusted applications persisting via LaunchAgent
License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-endpoint.events.file*logs-endpoint.events.process*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
sequence by host.id with maxspan=30s
 [file where host.os.type == "macos" and event.action == "launch_daemon"] by process.entity_id
 [process where host.os.type == "macos" and event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.name == "launchctl" and process.args == "load"] by process.parent.entity_id

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Launch Service Creation and Immediate Loading in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).