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T1037 Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts

Adversaries may use scripts automatically executed at boot or logon initialization to establish persistence. Initialization scripts can be used to perform administrative functions, which may often execute other programs or send information to an internal logging server. These scripts can vary based on operating system and whether applied locally or remotely.

Adversaries may use these scripts to maintain persistence on a single system. Depending on the access configuration of the logon scripts, either local credentials or an administrator account may be necessary.

An adversary may also be able to escalate their privileges since some boot or logon initialization scripts run with higher privileges.

Item Value
ID T1037
Sub-techniques T1037.001, T1037.002, T1037.003, T1037.004, T1037.005
Tactics TA0003, TA0004
Platforms Linux, Windows, macOS
Version 2.1
Created 31 May 2017
Last Modified 30 March 2023

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0106 Rocke Rocke has installed an “init.d” startup script to maintain persistence.1

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1022 Restrict File and Directory Permissions Restrict write access to logon scripts to specific administrators.
M1024 Restrict Registry Permissions Ensure proper permissions are set for Registry hives to prevent users from modifying keys for logon scripts that may lead to persistence.

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component
DS0026 Active Directory Active Directory Object Modification
DS0017 Command Command Execution
DS0022 File File Creation
DS0009 Process Process Creation
DS0024 Windows Registry Windows Registry Key Creation

References