Sigma rule: File and Directory Discovery - MacOS

Rule

Title

File and Directory Discovery - MacOS

Status

test

Level

informational

Author

Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community

Date

2020-10-19

Modified

2022-11-25

File

rules/macos/process_creation/proc_creation_macos_file_and_directory_discovery.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects usage of system utilities to discover files and directories

Log source

product

macos

category

process_creation

Detection

select_file_with_asterisk:
    Image: '/usr/bin/file'
    CommandLine|re: '(.){200,}' # execution of the 'file */* *>> /tmp/output.txt' will produce huge commandline
select_recursive_ls:
    Image: '/bin/ls'
    CommandLine|contains: '-R'
select_find_execution:
    Image: '/usr/bin/find'
select_mdfind_execution:
    Image: '/usr/bin/mdfind'
select_tree_execution|endswith:
    Image: '/tree'
condition: 1 of select*

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Legitimate activities

Tags

• attack.discovery
• attack.t1083

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

• T1083

References

• https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/f339e7da7d05f6057fdfcdd3742bfcf365fee2a9/atomics/T1083/T1083.md

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules/macos/process_creation/proc_creation_macos_file_and_directory_discovery.yml