Launchd - T1053.004 (8faedf87-dceb-4c35-b2a2-7286f59a3bc3)
This technique is deprecated due to the inaccurate usage. The report cited did not provide technical detail as to how the malware interacted directly with launchd rather than going through known services. Other system services are used to interact with launchd rather than launchd being used by itself.
Adversaries may abuse the Launchd daemon to perform task scheduling for initial or recurring execution of malicious code. The launchd daemon, native to macOS, is responsible for loading and maintaining services within the operating system. This process loads the parameters for each launch-on-demand system-level daemon from the property list (plist) files found in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and /Library/LaunchDaemons (Citation: AppleDocs Launch Agent Daemons). These LaunchDaemons have property list files which point to the executables that will be launched (Citation: Methods of Mac Malware Persistence).
An adversary may use the launchd daemon in macOS environments to schedule new executables to run at system startup or on a scheduled basis for persistence. launchd can also be abused to run a process under the context of a specified account. Daemons, such as launchd, run with the permissions of the root user account, and will operate regardless of which user account is logged in.
| Cluster A | Galaxy A | Cluster B | Galaxy B | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launchd - T1053.004 (8faedf87-dceb-4c35-b2a2-7286f59a3bc3) | Attack Pattern | Scheduled Task/Job - T1053 (35dd844a-b219-4e2b-a6bb-efa9a75995a9) | Attack Pattern | 1 |