T1059.001 PowerShell

This diagnostic statement provides for implementation of methods to block similar future attacks via security tools such as antivirus and IDS/IPS to provide protection against threats and exploitation attempts.

This diagnostic statement implements technical controls (e.g., VPN, antivirus software) to address the risks of end-user personal computing devices accessing the organization’s network and resources.

This diagnostic statement provides for securely configuring production systems. This includes hardening default configurations and making security-focused setting adjustments to reduce the attack surface, enforce best practices, and protect sensitive data thereby mitigating adversary exploitation.

This diagnostic statement protects against PowerShell through the use of privileged account management and the use of multi-factor authentication.

This diagnostic statement protects against PowerShell through the use of verifying integrity of software/firmware, loading software that is trusted, ensuring privileged process integrity and checking software signatures.

This diagnostic statement protects against PowerShell through the use of privileged account management. Employing auditing, privilege access management, and just in time access protects against adversaries trying to obtain illicit access to critical systems.

Antivirus/Antimalware software can be utilized to detect and quarantine files that have been embedded with malicious commands or scripts.

This diagnostic statement provides protection from Command and Scripting Interpreter through the implementation of security configuration baselines for OS, software, file integrity monitoring and imaging. Security baselining along with disallowing scripts and integrity checking can help protect against adversaries that may abuse command and script interpreters.

Mobile code procedures address specific actions taken to prevent the development, acquisition, and introduction of unacceptable mobile code within organizational systems, including requiring mobile code to be digitally signed by a trusted source.

This diagnostic statement provides protections for production environments. Measures such as network segmentation and access control reduce the attack surface, restrict movement by adversaries, and protect critical assets and data from compromise.

This diagnostic statement protects against PowerShell through the use of limiting access to resources to only authorized devices, management of personal computing devices, network intrusion prevention, and the use of antimalware.

This vulnerability is exploited by a remote adversary who has either authenticated to a Microsoft Exchange Server or has gained access to PowerShell prior to leveraging this vulnerability. The adversary then performs remote code execution via PowerShell to install a Chopper web shell to perform Active Directory reconnaissance and data exfiltration.

This vulnerability is exploited by a remote adversary who has either authenticated to a Microsoft Exchange Server or has gained access to PowerShell prior to leveraging this vulnerability. The adversary then performs remote code execution via PowerShell to install a Chopper web shell to perform Active Directory reconnaissance and data exfiltration.

The Microsoft Sentinel Analytics "Powershell Empire cmdlets seen in command line" query can identify use of Empire, which leverages PowerShell for the majority of its client-side agent tasks and can conduct PowerShell remoting. The coverage for these queries is minimal (specific to Empire) resulting in an overall Minimal score.

This control may detect suspicious usage of PowerShell and the Windows command line. These detections include usage of suspicious arguments, dynamic script construction, and shellcode on the commandline. The following alerts may be generated: "Detected anomalous mix of upper and lower case characters in command-line", "Detected encoded executable in command line data", "Detected obfuscated command line", "Detected suspicious combination of HTA and PowerShell", "Detected suspicious commandline arguments", "Detected suspicious commandline used to start all executables in a directory", "Detected suspicious credentials in commandline", "Dynamic PS script construction", "Suspicious PowerShell Activity Detected", "Suspicious PowerShell cmdlets executed", "Suspicious command execution".

This control monitors for execution of known malicious PowerShell PowerSploit cmdlets. Temporal factor is uknown.

The AWS WAF protects web applications from injection attacks that leverage command and scripting interpreters. AWS WAF provides this protection via the following rule sets that block malicious traffic across a variety of operating systems and applications. AWSManagedRulesCommonRuleSet AWSManagedRulesSQLiRuleSet AWSManagedRulesUnixRuleSet AWSManagedRulesWindowsRuleSet AWSManagedRulesPHPRuleSet AWSManagedRulesWordPressRuleSet This is given a score of Significant because it provides protections for PowerShell, Unix, and JavaScript command and scripting interpreters by blocking the malicious content in near real-time.

This control's "Remote code execution attempt (external ID 2019)" alert can detect Remote code execution via Powershell. This may lead to false positives as administrative workstations, IT team members, and service accounts can all perform legitimate administrative tasks against domain controllers. Additionally, this alert seems to be specific to detecting execution on domain controllers and AD FS servers, limiting its coverage.

In Microsoft 365 organizations with mailboxes in Exchange Online or standalone Exchange Online Protection (EOP) organizations without Exchange Online mailboxes, email messages are automatically protected against malware by EOP. Some of the major categories of malware are: Viruses that infect other programs and data, and spread through your computer or network looking for programs to infect. Spyware that gathers your personal information, such as sign-in information and personal data, and sends it back to its author. Ransomware that encrypts your data and demands payment to decrypt it. Anti-malware software doesn't help you decrypt encrypted files, but it can detect the malware payload that's associated with the ransomware. EOP offers multi-layered malware protection that's designed to catch all known malware in Windows, Linux, and Mac that travels into or out of your organization. The following options help provide anti-malware protection: Layered defenses against malware: Multiple anti-malware scan engines help protect against both known and unknown threats. These engines include powerful heuristic detection to provide protection even during the early stages of a malware outbreak. This multi-engine approach has been shown to provide significantly more protection than using just one anti-malware engine. Real-time threat response: During some outbreaks, the anti-malware team might have enough information about a virus or other form of malware to write sophisticated policy rules that detect the threat, even before a definition is available from any of the scan engines used by the service. These rules are published to the global network every 2 hours to provide your organization with an extra layer of protection against attacks. Fast anti-malware definition deployment: The anti-malware team maintains close relationships with partners who develop anti-malware engines. As a result, the service can receive and integrate malware definitions and patches before they're publicly released. Our connection with these partners often allows us to develop our own remedies as well. The service checks for updated definitions for all anti-malware engines every hour. License Requirements: M365 E3 or Microsoft Defender for Office plan 1.

Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) is a protection feature in Exchange Online Protection (EOP) that retroactively detects and neutralizes malicious phishing, spam, or malware messages that have already been delivered to Exchange Online mailboxes. With the E5 licensing or Office Plan 2, ZAP is also able to retroactively detect existing malicious chat messages in Microsoft Teams that are identified as malware or high confidence phishing. License Requirements: ZAP for Defender O365 is included with M365's E3 and requires E5 when leveraging ZAP for Teams security.