Modification of Environment Variable via Unsigned or Untrusted Parent

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-03-18

Created 5 years ago on 2021-01-14

About

Identifies modifications to an environment variable using the built-in launchctl command. Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking certain environment variables to load arbitrary libraries or bypass certain restrictions.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Hijack Execution Flow (T1574)(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 == "launchctl" and
  (process.parent.code_signature.exists == false or process.parent.code_signature.trusted == false) and
  process.args == "setenv"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Modification of Environment Variable via Unsigned or Untrusted Parent 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).