Malicious Keychain Credential Extraction via security Utility

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
macos
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-07-22
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the macOS security utility being used to dump keychain contents or extract stored passwords, a credential theft step performed by MacStealer after harvesting the login password. Reading generic and internet passwords from the keychain lets the malware collect browser and application secrets for exfiltration.

Related detections5 linkedT1555.001 — drag to rearrange
Uncommon macOS Keychain Credential Access via Security Utility (via process_creation)
Malicious Keychain Credential Theft via security find-generic-password by ClickLock macOS Stealer (via process_creation)
Malicious macOS Credential Verification via dscl authonly
Suspicious macOS Keychain Credential Dump via security Utility (via process_creation)
macOS Keychain Credential Dump via security find-certificate/export and dump-keychain
Malicious Keychain Credential Extraction via security Utility
Pivot detection · T1555.001 · 5 related

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