Suspicious Apple Mail Rule Plist Modification

Last updated 16 days ago on 2026-02-09

Created a month ago on 2026-01-30

About

Detects suspicious creation or modification of the Apple Mail SyncedRules plist file by a non-Mail application. An adversary could establish persistence by creating or modifying an Apple Mail rule to point to a script file on disk, which will execute when an email matching the trigger is received.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: PersistenceData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Event Triggered Execution (T1546)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Execution (TA0002)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ User Execution (T1204)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

License

Elastic License v2(external, 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-*
Related Integrations: endpoint(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗file where host.os.type == "macos" and event.type != "deletion" and
  file.name == "SyncedRules.plist" and
  file.path like ("/Users/*/Library/Mail/*/MailData/SyncedRules.plist",
                  "/Users/*/Library/Mobile Documents/com.apple.mail/Data/*/MailData/SyncedRules.plist") and
  not process.executable like ("/System/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail",
                               "/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail",
                               "/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd",
                               "/usr/libexec/xpcproxy",
                               "/System/Library/Frameworks/FileProvider.framework/Support/fileproviderd",
                               "/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CloudDocsDaemon.framework/Versions/A/Support/bird",
                               "/sbin/launchd",
                               "/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Suspicious Apple Mail Rule Plist Modification 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).