Malicious Shell Payload Piped from curl to zsh

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
macos
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-08
Updated
2026-09-08

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Persistence

  5. Priv Esc

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a base64 decoded command that pipes remote content fetched with curl directly into the zsh interpreter. This fileless macOS execution technique is used by fake software advertisement campaigns to run a stealer without touching disk.

Related detections9 linkedT1140 — drag to rearrange
Obfuscated Base64-Decoded Payload Piped to a Shell (via process_creation)
Obfuscated Base64-Decoded Payload Piped to Shell via macOS ClickFix Terminal Lure (via process_creation)
Suspicious awk Character Generation Piped to Shell on VMware ESXi (via process_creation)
Hidden PowerShell Archive Extraction via ExtractToDirectory
CastleLoader ClickFix PowerShell Hex Decode and Re-Execution
Suspicious Cabinet Extraction of Masqueraded vstm Archive via extrac32
Possible Bitbucket Pre-Auth RCE via git archive exec Null-Byte Injection (CVE-2022-36804) (via webserver)
Suspicious tar Extraction of Staged Archive to Temp (via process_creation)
Malicious Multi Layer Base64 Decoded Payload Execution via Bash (via process_creation)
Malicious Shell Payload Piped from curl to zsh
Pivot detection · T1140 · 9 related

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