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Re-opened Applications - T1164 (6a3be63a-64c5-4678-a036-03ff8fc35300)

Starting in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), users can specify certain applications to be re-opened when a user reboots their machine. 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 (Citation: Methods of Mac Malware Persistence).

Cluster A Galaxy A Cluster B Galaxy B Level
Re-opened Applications - T1164 (6a3be63a-64c5-4678-a036-03ff8fc35300) Attack Pattern Re-opened Applications - T1547.007 (e5cc9e7a-e61a-46a1-b869-55fb6eab058e) Attack Pattern 1
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution - T1547 (1ecb2399-e8ba-4f6b-8ba7-5c27d49405cf) Attack Pattern Re-opened Applications - T1547.007 (e5cc9e7a-e61a-46a1-b869-55fb6eab058e) Attack Pattern 2