Suspicious macOS Keychain Credential Dumping via security find-generic-password

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
macos
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-01
Updated
2026-10-01

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 use of the built-in security command line utility to extract stored secrets from the macOS Keychain with find-generic-password. The MacSync stealer analyzed by Huntress abused this technique to harvest saved credentials from compromised hosts. Because the security binary is legitimate, focus on unexpected parent processes and scripted invocations that indicate credential theft rather than administrator activity.

Related detections9 linkedT1555.001 — drag to rearrange
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Uncommon macOS Keychain Credential Access via Security Utility (via process_creation)
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Suspicious macOS Keychain Credential Dumping via security find-generic-password
Pivot detection · T1555.001 · 9 related

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