Query: Encoded PowerShell / command-line abuse matching Steganography
Matching passage: T1027.003 Steganography. Tactics: stealth. Description: Adversaries may use steganography techniques in order to prevent the detection of hidden information. Steganographic techniques can be used to hide data in digital media such as images, audio tracks, video clips, or text files. [Duqu](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0038) was an early example of malware that used steganography. It encrypted the gathered information from a victim's system and hid it within an image before exfiltrating the image to a C2 server.(Citation: Wikipedia Duqu) By the end of 2017, a threat group used <code>Invoke-PSImage</code> to hide [PowerShell](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1059/001) commands in an image file (.png) and execute the code on a victim's system. In this particular case the [PowerShell](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1059/001) code downloaded another obfuscated script to gather intelligence from the victim's machine and communicate it back to the adversary.(Citation: McAfee Malicious Doc Targets Pyeongchang Olympics)
Near-miss passage: T1027.011 Fileless Storage. Tactics: stealth. Description: Adversaries may store data in "fileless" formats to conceal malicious activity from defenses. Fileless storage can be broadly defined as any format other than a file. Common examples of non-volatile fileless storage in Windows systems include the Windows Registry, event logs, or WMI repository.(Citation: Microsoft Fileless)(Citation: SecureList Fileless) Shared memory directories on Linux systems (`/dev/shm`, `/run/shm`, `/var/run`, and `/var/lock`) and volatile directories on Network Devices (`/tmp` and `/volatile`) may also be considered fileless storage, as files written to these directories are mapped directly to RAM and not stored on the disk.(Citation: Elastic Binary Executed from Shared Memory Directory)(Citation: Akami Frog4Shell 2024)(Citation: Aquasec Muhstik Malware 2024)(Citation: Bitsight 7777 Botnet)(Citation: CISCO Nexus 900 Config). Similar to fileless in-memory behaviors such as [Reflective Code Loading](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1620) and [Process Injection](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1055), fileless data storage may remain undetected by antivirus and other endpoint security tools that can only access specific file formats from disk storage. Leveraging fileless storage may also allow adversaries to bypass the protections offered by read-only file systems in Linux.(Citation: Sysdig Fileless Malware 23022) Adversaries may use fileless storage to conceal various types of stored data, including payloads/shellcode (potentially being used as part of [Persistence](https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003)) and collected data not yet exfiltrated from the victim (e.g., [Local Data Staging](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1074/001)). Adversaries also often encrypt, encode, splice, or otherwise obfuscate this fileless data when stored. Some forms of fileless storage activity may indirectly create artifacts in the file system, but in central and otherwise difficult to inspect formats such as the WMI (e.g., `%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem\R