Potential Admin Group Account Addition

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-03-18

Created 6 years ago on 2020-01-05

About

Identifies attempts to add an account to the admin group via the command line. This could be an indication of privilege escalation activity.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Valid Accounts (T1078)(opens in a new tab or window)

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.*
Related Integrations: endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)
Query

process where host.os.type == "macos" and event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
 process.name in ("dscl", "dseditgroup") and process.args like~ ("/Groups/admin", "admin") and process.args like ("-a", "-append") and
 not process.Ext.effective_parent.executable like ("/Library/Application Support/JAMF/Jamf.app/Contents/MacOS/JamfDaemon.app/Contents/MacOS/JamfDaemon",
                                                   "/Library/Application Support/JAMF/Jamf.app/Contents/MacOS/JamfManagementService.app/Contents/MacOS/JamfManagementService",
                                                   "/opt/jc/bin/jumpcloud-agent",
                                                   "/Library/Addigy/go-agent")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential Admin Group Account Addition 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).