Processes Tapping Keyboard Events
The following analytic detects processes on macOS systems that are tapping keyboard events, potentially monitoring all keystrokes made by a user. It leverages data from osquery results within the Alerts data model,…
Description
The following analytic detects processes on macOS systems that are tapping keyboard events, potentially monitoring all keystrokes made by a user. It leverages data from osquery results within the Alerts data model, focusing on specific process names and command lines. This activity is significant as it is a common technique used by Remote Access Trojans (RATs) to log keystrokes, posing a serious security risk. If confirmed malicious, this could lead to unauthorized access to sensitive information, including passwords and personal data, compromising the integrity and confidentiality of the system.
Detection logic
Detection requirements
- Log source category
- osquery_results
Known benign triggers
- There might be some false positives as keyboard event taps are used by processes like Siri and Zoom video chat, for some good examples of processes to exclude please see [this](https://github.com/facebook/osquery/pull/5345#issuecomment-454639161) comment.
MITRE ATT&CK mappings
Not mapped to ATT&CK.
No references are available for this detection.
From the source
- At source
- Open at source
- Upstream identifier
- 2a371608-331d-4034-ae2c-21dda8f1d0ec
- Tagged by the source as
- APT37 Rustonotto and FadeStealerColdRoot MacOS RATEndpointendpointSplunk CloudSplunk EnterpriseSplunk Enterprise Securitythreat
Licence
- Published under
- Apache License 2.0Read the licence
- Attribution
- Required
- Obtained under
- Apache-2.0Read the origin licence
Authorship
- Written by
- Published
- Aug 26, 2026
- Version
- 1