Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Shortcut Modification T1547.009
Tactics: Persistence, Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may create or modify shortcuts that can execute a program during system boot or user login. Shortcuts or symbolic links are used to reference other files or programs that will be opened or executed when the shortcut is clicked or executed by a system startup process.
Events covered
7 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | Event ID 11 | FileCreate |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4664 | An attempt was made to create a hard link. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 5145 | A network share object was checked to see whether client can be granted desired access. |
| ESF | write | File Write (NOTIFY) |
| PowerShell | Event ID 4104 | Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal). |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 13 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 (18 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 (69 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.
Exclusions (23 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude 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 7 rules
- Creation Exe for Service with Unquoted Path
- Desktop.INI Created by Uncommon Process
- New Custom Shim Database Created
- NTFS hard link creation
- NTFS symbolic link configuration change
- NTFS symbolic link creation
- Windows Network Access Suspicious desktop.ini Action
Elastic 3 rules
- Persistence via Docker Shortcut Modification
- Persistent Scripts in the Startup Directory
- Shortcut File Written or Modified on Startup Folder
Splunk 2 rules
- Symbolic OR Hard File Link Created (PowerShell)
- Symbolic OR Hard File Link Created (Windows Event Log)