T1197 BITS Jobs Mappings

Adversaries may abuse BITS jobs to persistently execute or clean up after malicious payloads. Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is a low-bandwidth, asynchronous file transfer mechanism exposed through Component Object Model (COM). (Citation: Microsoft COM) (Citation: Microsoft BITS) BITS is commonly used by updaters, messengers, and other applications preferred to operate in the background (using available idle bandwidth) without interrupting other networked applications. File transfer tasks are implemented as BITS jobs, which contain a queue of one or more file operations.

The interface to create and manage BITS jobs is accessible through PowerShell (Citation: Microsoft BITS) and the BITSAdmin tool. (Citation: Microsoft BITSAdmin)

Adversaries may abuse BITS to download, execute, and even clean up after running malicious code. BITS tasks are self-contained in the BITS job database, without new files or registry modifications, and often permitted by host firewalls. (Citation: CTU BITS Malware June 2016) (Citation: Mondok Windows PiggyBack BITS May 2007) (Citation: Symantec BITS May 2007) BITS enabled execution may also enable persistence by creating long-standing jobs (the default maximum lifetime is 90 days and extendable) or invoking an arbitrary program when a job completes or errors (including after system reboots). (Citation: PaloAlto UBoatRAT Nov 2017) (Citation: CTU BITS Malware June 2016)

BITS upload functionalities can also be used to perform Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol. (Citation: CTU BITS Malware June 2016)

View in MITRE ATT&CK®

Mappings

Capability ID Capability Description Mapping Type ATT&CK ID ATT&CK Name
AC-2 Account Management Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
AC-3 Access Enforcement Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
AC-5 Separation of Duties Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
AC-6 Least Privilege Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
CA-7 Continuous Monitoring Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
CM-5 Access Restrictions for Change Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
CM-6 Configuration Settings Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
CM-7 Least Functionality Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
IA-2 Identification and Authentication (organizational Users) Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
SC-7 Boundary Protection Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
SI-10 Information Input Validation Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
SI-15 Information Output Filtering Protects T1197 BITS Jobs
SI-4 System Monitoring Protects T1197 BITS Jobs