Potential macOS SSH Brute Force Detected

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Identifies a high number (20) of macOS SSH KeyGen process executions from the same host. An adversary may attempt a brute force attack to obtain unauthorized access to user accounts.

Rule type: threshold

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

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://themittenmac.com/detecting-ssh-activity-via-process-monitoring/

Tags:

• Elastic
• Host
• macOS
• Threat Detection
• Credential Access

Version: 102

Rule authors:

• Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

event.category:process and event.type:start and process.name:"sshd-keygen-wrapper" and process.parent.name:launchd

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

• Tactic:

  • Name: Credential Access
  • ID: TA0006
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0006/

• Technique:

  • Name: Brute Force
  • ID: T1110
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1110/