Elastic Security Detection Rules

Potential macOS SSH Brute Force Detected

Last updated 20 days ago on 2026-05-18
Created 6 years ago on 2020-11-16

About

Identifies a high number of inbound SSH login attempts on a macOS host within a short time window. On macOS, each inbound SSH authentication attempt spawns the sshd-keygen-wrapper process once, whether the login succeeds or fails. Adversaries may perform password brute force or password spraying against exposed SSH services to obtain unauthorized access.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Credential AccessData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Credential Access (TA0006)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Brute Force (T1110)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Initial Access (TA0001)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ External Remote Services (T1133)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

License
Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Threshold Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-endpoint.events.*
Related Integrations

endpoint(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query
text code block:
event.category:process and host.os.type:macos and event.type:start and process.name:"sshd-keygen-wrapper" and process.parent.name:launchd

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential macOS SSH Brute Force Detected 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(external, opens in a new tab or window).