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T1546.013 PowerShell Profile

Adversaries may gain persistence and elevate privileges by executing malicious content triggered by PowerShell profiles. A PowerShell profile (profile.ps1) is a script that runs when PowerShell starts and can be used as a logon script to customize user environments.

PowerShell supports several profiles depending on the user or host program. For example, there can be different profiles for PowerShell host programs such as the PowerShell console, PowerShell ISE or Visual Studio Code. An administrator can also configure a profile that applies to all users and host programs on the local computer. 1

Adversaries may modify these profiles to include arbitrary commands, functions, modules, and/or PowerShell drives to gain persistence. Every time a user opens a PowerShell session the modified script will be executed unless the -NoProfile flag is used when it is launched. 2

An adversary may also be able to escalate privileges if a script in a PowerShell profile is loaded and executed by an account with higher privileges, such as a domain administrator. 3

Item Value
ID T1546.013
Sub-techniques T1546.001, T1546.002, T1546.003, T1546.004, T1546.005, T1546.006, T1546.007, T1546.008, T1546.009, T1546.010, T1546.011, T1546.012, T1546.013, T1546.014, T1546.015, T1546.016
Tactics TA0004, TA0003
Platforms Windows
Permissions required Administrator, User
Version 1.1
Created 24 January 2020
Last Modified 08 February 2022

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0010 Turla Turla has used PowerShell profiles to maintain persistence on an infected machine.2

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1045 Code Signing Enforce execution of only signed PowerShell scripts. Sign profiles to avoid them from being modified.
M1022 Restrict File and Directory Permissions Making PowerShell profiles immutable and only changeable by certain administrators will limit the ability for adversaries to easily create user level persistence.
M1054 Software Configuration Avoid PowerShell profiles if not needed. Use the -No Profile flag with when executing PowerShell scripts remotely to prevent local profiles and scripts from being executed.

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component
DS0017 Command Command Execution
DS0022 File File Creation
DS0009 Process Process Creation

References

  1. Microsoft. (2017, November 29). About Profiles. Retrieved June 14, 2019. ↩

  2. Faou, M. and Dumont R.. (2019, May 29). A dive into Turla PowerShell usage. Retrieved June 14, 2019. ↩↩

  3. DeRyke, A.. (2019, June 7). Lab Notes: Persistence and Privilege Elevation using the Powershell Profile. Retrieved July 8, 2019. ↩

  4. Malware Archaeology. (2016, June). WINDOWS POWERSHELL LOGGING CHEAT SHEET - Win 7/Win 2008 or later. Retrieved June 24, 2016. ↩

  5. Microsoft. (2021, September 27). about_Profiles. Retrieved February 4, 2022. ↩