Sublime Plugin or Application Script Modification

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Adversaries may create or modify the Sublime application plugins or scripts to execute a malicious payload each time the Sublime application is started.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

• auditbeat-*
• logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-9m (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/common-options.html#date-math[Date Math format], see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

• https://posts.specterops.io/persistent-jxa-66e1c3cd1cf5

Tags:

• Elastic
• Host
• macOS
• Threat Detection
• Persistence

Version: 2

Rule authors:

• Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define event.ingested and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate event.ingested to @timestamp for this rule to work.

file where event.type in ("change", "creation") and file.extension : "py" and
  file.path :
    (
      "/Users/*/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text*/Packages/*.py",
      "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/MacOS/sublime.py"
    ) and
  not process.executable :
    (
      "/Applications/Sublime Text*.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime Text*",
      "/usr/local/Cellar/git/*/bin/git",
      "/usr/libexec/xpcproxy",
      "/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DesktopServicesHelper",
      "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin_host"
    )

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

• Tactic:

  • Name: Persistence
  • ID: TA0003
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/

• Technique:

  • Name: Compromise Client Software Binary
  • ID: T1554
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1554/