Suspicious macOS LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon Plist Creation

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1543.001Launch Agent
- T1543.004Launch Daemon
Priv Esc
- T1543.001Launch Agent
- T1543.004Launch Daemon
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of a property list file inside the macOS LaunchAgents or LaunchDaemons directories. It maps to persistence where an attacker drops a launchd job configured with RunAtLoad and a short StartInterval to repeatedly execute a hidden payload from a temp path. Detecting new plists in these directories surfaces launchd persistence installation.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1543.001 — drag to rearrange

LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon Persistence File Creation on macOS (via file_event)

Malicious Mini Shai-Hulud gh-token-monitor Persistence Service (via file_event)

macOS launchctl Execution of Launch Agent/Daemon

macOS Persistence Attempt Using PlistBuddy to Modify LaunchAgents/LaunchDaemons

Suspicious Persistence Load via Launchctl (via process_creation)

Masquerading Cuckoo Stealer LaunchAgent Masquerading as Homebrew Updater (via file_event)

Suspicious LaunchAgent Masquerading as coreaudiod (via file_event)

Suspicious LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon Load via launchctl

Malicious macOS LaunchDaemon Persistence Masquerading as Finder Helper

Suspicious macOS LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon Plist Creation

Pivot detection · T1543.001 · 9 related

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

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 →