Suspicious osascript LaunchAgent Plist Persistence for PhantomPulse on macOS

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

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

What it detects

This rule detects osascript writing a LaunchAgent property list to establish persistence as used by the macOS PhantomPulse RAT variant in Elastic research. Using AppleScript to drop a plist under LaunchAgents lets the implant execute automatically at login while avoiding direct file tooling.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1543.001 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious osascript LaunchAgent Plist Persistence for PhantomPulse on macOS

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.

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