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 <code>~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist</code> and <code>~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.* .plist</code>.
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).
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