Malicious Sapphire Sleet TCC Privacy Database Tampering via sqlite3 (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1548Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Defense Evasion
- T1548Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects sqlite3 being used to read or write the macOS TCC.db privacy database, an injection technique Sapphire Sleet uses to grant itself access to protected resources without user consent. Adversaries tamper with TCC.db to bypass macOS privacy controls covering the camera, microphone, and full disk access, so direct sqlite3 access to this database is a strong indicator of privacy-control subversion.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1548 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious storagekitd Spawning Third-Party Filesystem Binary from Library Filesystems (via process_creation)

Malicious Switch User to Rogue Root-Equivalent Account troot (via process_creation)

Suspicious Sang Loader Execution with Install or PassUAC Arguments

Possible GTFOBins Shell Breakout via Unix Utilities

Malicious Azure Elevate Access to User Access Administrator

Suspicious User Home Directory Modification via dscl Process Creation

Possible GTFOBins Shell Breakout via apt Command

Malicious Update Orchestrator Service Reconfiguration for Privilege Escalation

Malicious macOS Credential Verification via dscl authonly

Malicious Sapphire Sleet TCC Privacy Database Tampering via sqlite3 (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1548 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →