Suspicious macOS Privilege Escalation Piping Password to sudo

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.004Unix Shell
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1548.003Sudo and Sudo Caching
Defense Evasion
- T1548.003Sudo and Sudo Caching
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a stored password being piped into sudo with the stdin flag, the non-interactive privilege escalation used by the AMOS stealer after harvesting a user password. Reading a captured password from a hidden file and feeding it to sudo grants root without a prompt. This scripted sudo pattern is characteristic of macOS stealer malware.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious macOS Privilege Escalation Piping Password to sudo

Pivot detection · T1059.004 · 9 related

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

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