Query: Encoded PowerShell / command-line abuse matching Exploitation for Defense Impairment
Matching passage: T1687 Exploitation for Defense Impairment. Tactics: defense impairment. Description: Adversaries may exploit vulnerabilities in security software, infrastructure, or defensive components to degrade, disable, or otherwise continue to impair their ability to prevent, detect, or respond to malicious activity. Adversaries may exploit a system or application vulnerability to directly interfere with defensive mechanisms. Exploitation occurs when an adversary takes advantage of a programming error in software, services, or the operating system to execute adversary-controlled code, often with the goal of weakening or disabling protections. Vulnerabilities may exist in security tools such as antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR), firewalls, or other monitoring solutions. Adversaries may use prior reconnaissance or perform discovery activities (e.g., [Software Discovery](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1518)) to identify defensive tools present in an environment and target them for exploitation. Successful exploitation may allow adversaries to terminate security processes, disable protections, bypass enforcement mechanisms, or reduce the effectiveness of defensive controls. In some cases, vulnerabilities in cloud-based or SaaS infrastructure may also be leveraged to bypass built-in security boundaries or disrupt visibility and enforcement across environments.(Citation: Salesforce zero-day in facebook phishing attack)
Near-miss passage: T1685 Disable or Modify Tools. Tactics: defense impairment. Description: Adversaries may disable, degrade, or tamper with security tools or applications (e.g., endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, intrusion detection systems (IDS), antivirus, logging agents, sensors, etc.) to impair or reduce visibility of defensive capabilities. This may include stopping specific services, killing processes, modifying or deleting tool configuration files and Registry keys, or preventing tools from updating. This may also include impairing defenses more broadly by disrupting preventative, detection, and response mechanisms across host, network, and cloud environments.(Citation: SCADAfence_ransomware) In addition to directly targeting tools, adversaries may block or manipulate indicators and telemetry used for detection. This includes maliciously disabling or redirecting sensors such as Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), modifying event log configurations (e.g., redirecting Security logs), or interfering with logging pipelines and forwarding mechanisms (e.g., SIEM ingestion).(Citation: Microsoft Lamin Sept 2017)(Citation: ETW Palantir) More advanced techniques include leveraging legitimate drivers or debugging mechanisms to render tools non-functional, bypassing anti-tampering protections, and targeting specific defenses such as Sysmon or cloud monitoring agents. Adversaries may also disrupt broader defensive operations, including update mechanisms, logging infrastructure (e.g., syslog), or event aggregation, further degrading an organization’s ability to detect and respond to malicious activity.(Citation: Cocomazzi FIN7 Reboot)