Malicious Bad Apples Remote Apple Events Lateral Movement via osascript

ATT&CK techniques

Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1021.004SSH
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects osascript invoking an eppc URL, matching the Bad Apples technique that weaponizes Remote Apple Events over TCP 3031 for lateral movement across macOS hosts. Sending AppleScript to a remote host via the eppc scheme lets an operator execute code on another Mac using native primitives. Such cross-host osascript activity is rarely benign and indicates hands-on movement.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1021.004 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Remote Apple Events Enablement via systemsetup

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Suspicious OpenSSH Reverse Tunnel Creation via Process Creation

Suspicious vCenter VAMI SSH Enable via appliance access API

Malicious vmanage-admin Public Key Authentication in SSH Auth Log

Suspicious OpenSSH Reverse Tunnel Over HTTPS Port (Chaos Ransomware)

Suspicious Automated SSH Lateral Movement with Batch Mode (via process_creation)

OpenSSH Native Server Feature Installation (via powershell)

OpenSSH Server Listening on Socket (via openssh)

Malicious Bad Apples Remote Apple Events Lateral Movement via osascript

Pivot detection · T1021.004 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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