Adversaries may establish persistence and/or elevate privileges using system mechanisms that trigger execution based on specific events. Various operating systems have means to monitor and subscribe to events such as logons or other user activity such as running specific applications/binaries. Cloud environments may also support various functions and services that monitor and can be invoked in response to specific cloud events.(Citation: Backdooring an AWS account)(Citation: Varonis Power Automate Data Exfiltration)(Citation: Microsoft DART Case Report 001)
Adversaries may abuse these mechanisms as a means of maintaining persistent access to a victim via repeatedly executing malicious code. After gaining access to a victim system, adversaries may create/modify event triggers to point to malicious content that will be executed whenever the event trigger is invoked.(Citation: FireEye WMI 2015)(Citation: Malware Persistence on OS X)(Citation: amnesia malware)
Since the execution can be proxied by an account with higher permissions, such as SYSTEM or service accounts, an adversary may be able to abuse these triggered execution mechanisms to escalate their privileges.
View in MITRE ATT&CK®| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CM-02 | Baseline Configuration | Protects | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution | |
| CM-06 | Configuration Settings | Protects | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution | |
| IA-09 | Service Identification and Authentication | Protects | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution | |
| SI-07 | Software, Firmware, and Information Integrity | Protects | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution | |
| PUR-IP-E5 | Information Protection | Technique Scores | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution |
Comments
Defender for Cloud Apps file policies allow you to enforce a wide range of automated processes. Policies can be set to provide Information Protection, including continuous compliance scans, legal eDiscovery tasks, and DLP for sensitive content shared publicly.
Information Protection Detects Event Triggered Execution attacks due to Information Protection Detecting when certain files that belong to a specific user group are being accessed excessively by a user who is not part of the group, which could be a potential insider threat.
License Requirements:
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 1 and plan 2
References
|
| PUR-AS-E5 | Audit Solutions | Technique Scores | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution |
Comments
Microsoft Purview auditing solutions provide an integrated solution to help organizations effectively respond to security events, forensic investigations, internal investigations, and compliance obligations. Thousands of user and admin operations performed in dozens of Microsoft 365 services and solutions are captured, recorded, and retained in your organization's unified audit log. Audit records for these events are searchable by security ops, IT admins, insider risk teams, and compliance and legal investigators in your organization. This capability provides visibility into the activities performed across your Microsoft 365 organization.
Microsoft's Audit Solutions detects Event Triggered Execution attacks due to the File and Page Audit Log activities which monitors for newly constructed files, for contextual data about files, and for changes made to files.
License Requirements:
Microsoft 365 E3 and E5
References
|
| DEF-SecScore-E3 | Secure Score | Technique Scores | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution |
Comments
Microsoft Secure Score is a measurement of an organization's security posture, with a higher number indicating more recommended actions taken. It can be found at Microsoft Secure Score in the Microsoft Defender portal.
Following the Secure Score recommendations can protect your organization from threats. From a centralized dashboard in the Microsoft Defender portal, organizations can monitor and work on the security of their Microsoft 365 identities, apps, and devices. Your score is updated in real time to reflect the information presented in the visualizations and recommended action pages. Secure Score also syncs daily to receive system data about your achieved points for each action.
To help you find the information you need more quickly, Microsoft recommended actions are organized into groups:
Identity (Microsoft Entra accounts & roles)
Device (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, known as Microsoft Secure Score for Devices)
Apps (email and cloud apps, including Office 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps)
Data (through Microsoft Information Protection)
References
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| DO365-ATH-E5 | Advanced Threat Hunting | Technique Scores | T1546 | Event Triggered Execution |
Comments
Advanced hunting is a query-based threat hunting tool that lets you explore up to 30 days of raw data. Advanced hunting in Microsoft Defender XDR allows you to proactively hunt for threats across: Devices managed by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Emails processed by Microsoft 365, Cloud app activities, authentication events, and domain controller activities. With this level of visibility, you can quickly hunt for threats that traverse sections of your network, including sophisticated intrusions that arrive on email or the web, elevate local privileges, acquire privileged domain credentials, and move laterally to across your devices. Advanced hunting supports two modes, guided and advanced. Users use advanced mode if they are comfortable using Kusto Query Language (KQL) to create queries from scratch.
Advanced Threat Hunting Detects Event-Triggered Execution attacks due to the DeviceFileEvents table in the advanced hunting schema which contains information about file creation, modification, and other file events.
License Requirements:
Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 2
References
|
| Technique ID | Technique Name | Number of Mappings |
|---|---|---|
| T1546.013 | PowerShell Profile | 10 |
| T1546.006 | LC_LOAD_DYLIB Addition | 14 |
| T1546.011 | Application Shimming | 2 |
| T1546.008 | Accessibility Features | 6 |
| T1546.009 | AppCert DLLs | 3 |
| T1546.003 | Windows Management Instrumentation Event Subscription | 12 |
| T1546.014 | Emond | 6 |
| T1546.004 | Unix Shell Configuration Modification | 8 |
| T1546.010 | AppInit DLLs | 5 |
| T1546.002 | Screensaver | 9 |
| T1546.016 | Installer Packages | 7 |