Persistence / T1546
Event Triggered Execution
Technique / Enterprise ATT&CK
Official MITRE entryAdversaries 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.
Sub-techniques
- T1546.001Change Default File Association
- T1546.002Screensaver
- T1546.003Windows Management Instrumentation Event Subscription
- T1546.004Unix Shell Configuration Modification
- T1546.005Trap
- T1546.006LC_LOAD_DYLIB Addition
- T1546.007Netsh Helper DLL
- T1546.008Accessibility Features
- T1546.009AppCert DLLs
- T1546.010AppInit DLLs
- T1546.011Application Shimming
- T1546.012Image File Execution Options Injection
- T1546.013PowerShell Profile
- T1546.014Emond
- T1546.015Component Object Model Hijacking
- T1546.016Installer Packages
- T1546.017Udev Rules
- T1546.018Python Startup Hooks