Event Triggered Execution: PowerShell Profile T1546.013
Tactics: Privilege Escalation, Persistence
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.
Events covered
2 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 11 | FileCreate |
| PowerShell | Event ID 4104 | Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal). |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 4 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (4 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (25 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 3 rules
- Potential Persistence Via PowerShell User Profile Using Add-Content
- PowerShell Profile Modification
- VsCode Powershell Profile Modification