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TECHNIQUES
PRE-ATT&CK
Priority Definition Planning
Priority Definition Direction
Target Selection
Technical Information Gathering
People Information Gathering
Organizational Information Gathering
Technical Weakness Identification
People Weakness Identification
Organizational Weakness Identification
Adversary OPSEC
Establish & Maintain Infrastructure
Persona Development
Build Capabilities
Test Capabilities
Stage Capabilities
Enterprise
Initial Access
Phishing
Supply Chain Compromise
Valid Accounts
Execution
Command and Scripting Interpreter
Inter-Process Communication
Scheduled Task/Job
System Services
User Execution
Persistence
Account Manipulation
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts
Create Account
Create or Modify System Process
Event Triggered Execution
Hijack Execution Flow
Office Application Startup
Pre-OS Boot
Scheduled Task/Job
Server Software Component
Traffic Signaling
Valid Accounts
Privilege Escalation
Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Access Token Manipulation
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts
Create or Modify System Process
Event Triggered Execution
Hijack Execution Flow
Process Injection
Scheduled Task/Job
Valid Accounts
Defense Evasion
Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Access Token Manipulation
Execution Guardrails
File and Directory Permissions Modification
Hide Artifacts
Hijack Execution Flow
Impair Defenses
Indicator Removal on Host
Masquerading
Modify Authentication Process
Modify Cloud Compute Infrastructure
Obfuscated Files or Information
Pre-OS Boot
Process Injection
Signed Binary Proxy Execution
Signed Script Proxy Execution
Subvert Trust Controls
Traffic Signaling
Trusted Developer Utilities Proxy Execution
Use Alternate Authentication Material
Valid Accounts
Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion
Credential Access
Brute Force
Credentials from Password Stores
Input Capture
Man-in-the-Middle
Modify Authentication Process
OS Credential Dumping
Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets
Unsecured Credentials
Discovery
Account Discovery
Permission Groups Discovery
Software Discovery
Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion
Lateral Movement
Remote Service Session Hijacking
Remote Services
Use Alternate Authentication Material
Collection
Archive Collected Data
Data from Information Repositories
Data Staged
Email Collection
Input Capture
Man-in-the-Middle
Command and Control
Application Layer Protocol
Data Encoding
Data Obfuscation
Dynamic Resolution
Encrypted Channel
Proxy
Traffic Signaling
Web Service
Exfiltration
Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
Exfiltration Over Other Network Medium
Exfiltration Over Physical Medium
Exfiltration Over Web Service
Impact
Data Manipulation
Defacement
Disk Wipe
Endpoint Denial of Service
Network Denial of Service
Mobile
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Privilege Escalation
Defense Evasion
Credential Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
Command and Control
Exfiltration
Impact
Network Effects
Remote Service Effects
  1. Home
  2. Techniques
  3. Enterprise
  4. Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
  5. Re-opened Applications

Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Re-opened Applications

ID Name
T1547.001 Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder
T1547.002 Authentication Package
T1547.003 Time Providers
T1547.004 Winlogon Helper DLL
T1547.005 Security Support Provider
T1547.006 Kernel Modules and Extensions
T1547.007 Re-opened Applications
T1547.008 LSASS Driver
T1547.009 Shortcut Modification
T1547.010 Port Monitors
T1547.011 Plist Modification

Adversaries may modify plist files to automatically run an application when a user logs in. Starting in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), users can specify certain applications to be re-opened when a user logs into their machine after reboot. While this is usually done via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on an app-by-app basis, there are property list files (plist) that contain this information as well located at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist and ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.* .plist.

An adversary can modify one of these files directly to include a link to their malicious executable to provide a persistence mechanism each time the user reboots their machine [1].

ID: T1547.007
Sub-technique of:  T1547
Tactics: Persistence, Privilege Escalation
Platforms: macOS
Permissions Required: User
Data Sources: File monitoring
Version: 1.0
Created: 24 January 2020
Last Modified: 24 January 2020

Mitigations

Mitigation Description
Disable or Remove Feature or Program

This feature can be disabled entirely with the following terminal command: defaults write -g ApplePersistence -bool no.
User Training

Holding the Shift key while logging in prevents apps from opening automatically. [2]

Detection

Monitoring the specific plist files associated with reopening applications can indicate when an application has registered itself to be reopened.

References

  1. Patrick Wardle. (2014, September). Methods of Malware Persistence on Mac OS X. Retrieved July 5, 2017.
  1. Apple. (2016, December 6). Automatically re-open windows, apps, and documents on your Mac. Retrieved July 11, 2017.