Suspicious Plist Download via curl on macOS

ATT&CK techniques

C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1105Ingress Tool Transfer
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects curl downloading a property list file on macOS. Silver Sparrow uses curl to retrieve a remote plist used to update its LaunchAgent and fetch additional payloads. Downloading executable plist configuration with curl is an uncommon pattern associated with macOS persistence and staging.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1105 — drag to rearrange

Malicious IoT Malware Download and Execution Cradle

Suspicious Payload Download to Temp via curl from CDN

Suspicious File Transfer via bitsadmin

Suspicious certutil Decode or Remote Download

Malicious XMRig Miner Installation via c3pool Setup Script

Suspicious APT36 Kavach Trojan Payload Download to Local Share via Command Line (via process_creation)

Suspicious Worm Self-Copy Into Boot and X11 Directories via Command Line (via process_creation)

Suspicious Payload Download to Temp Directory by Simps Botnet (via process_creation)

Suspicious Remote Script Piped to Shell via Wget (via process_creation)

Suspicious Plist Download via curl on macOS

Pivot detection · T1105 · 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 →