Suspicious Emond Child Process

Identifies the execution of a suspicious child process of the Event Monitor Daemon (emond). Adversaries may abuse this service by writing a rule to execute commands when a defined event occurs, such as system start up or user authentication.

Elastic rule (View on GitHub)

 1[metadata]
 2creation_date = "2021/01/11"
 3integration = ["endpoint"]
 4maturity = "production"
 5min_stack_comments = "New fields added: required_fields, related_integrations, setup"
 6min_stack_version = "8.3.0"
 7updated_date = "2023/06/22"
 8
 9[rule]
10author = ["Elastic"]
11description = """
12Identifies the execution of a suspicious child process of the Event Monitor Daemon (emond). Adversaries may abuse this
13service by writing a rule to execute commands when a defined event occurs, such as system start up or user
14authentication.
15"""
16from = "now-9m"
17index = ["logs-endpoint.events.*"]
18language = "eql"
19license = "Elastic License v2"
20name = "Suspicious Emond Child Process"
21references = ["https://www.xorrior.com/emond-persistence/"]
22risk_score = 47
23rule_id = "3e3d15c6-1509-479a-b125-21718372157e"
24severity = "medium"
25tags = ["Domain: Endpoint", "OS: macOS", "Use Case: Threat Detection", "Tactic: Persistence", "Data Source: Elastic Defend"]
26timestamp_override = "event.ingested"
27type = "eql"
28
29query = '''
30process where host.os.type == "macos" and event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
31 process.parent.name : "emond" and
32 process.name : (
33   "bash",
34   "dash",
35   "sh",
36   "tcsh",
37   "csh",
38   "zsh",
39   "ksh",
40   "fish",
41   "Python",
42   "python*",
43   "perl*",
44   "php*",
45   "osascript",
46   "pwsh",
47   "curl",
48   "wget",
49   "cp",
50   "mv",
51   "touch",
52   "echo",
53   "base64",
54   "launchctl")
55'''
56
57
58[[rule.threat]]
59framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"
60[[rule.threat.technique]]
61id = "T1546"
62name = "Event Triggered Execution"
63reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546/"
64[[rule.threat.technique.subtechnique]]
65id = "T1546.014"
66name = "Emond"
67reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546/014/"
68
69
70
71[rule.threat.tactic]
72id = "TA0003"
73name = "Persistence"
74reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/"

References

Related rules

to-top