T1546.013sub-technique of T1546 Event Triggered Execution

PowerShell Profile

Windowsnothing on this site yetT1546.013 on attack.mitre.org

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.
MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

If this is happening now

Checklists and playbooks to open while the alert is still live.

Playbook for this stage

Suspicious execution on an endpoint

An EDR alert, an unexplained process, or a user reporting something odd.

Playbook for this stage

Cloud account compromise

Impossible travel, an unrecognised inbox rule, or a reported invoice-fraud attempt.

how MITRE says to see it

Detection Strategy for PowerShell Profile Persistence via profile.ps1 Modification

Defenders can identify PowerShell profile-based persistence by correlating file creation or modification in known profile locations with subsequent PowerShell process launches that do not use the `-NoProfile` flag.

what reduces it

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.

the rest of T1546

T1546.001 Change Default File Association · not covered yet
T1546.002 Screensaver · not covered yet
T1546.003 Windows Management Instrumentation Event Subscription · 5 on this site
T1546.004 Unix Shell Configuration Modification · not covered yet
T1546.005 Trap · not covered yet
T1546.006 LC_LOAD_DYLIB Addition · not covered yet
T1546.007 Netsh Helper DLL · not covered yet
T1546.008 Accessibility Features · not covered yet
T1546.009 AppCert DLLs · not covered yet
T1546.010 AppInit DLLs · not covered yet
T1546.011 Application Shimming · not covered yet
T1546.012 Image File Execution Options Injection · not covered yet
T1546.014 Emond · not covered yet
T1546.015 Component Object Model Hijacking · not covered yet
T1546.016 Installer Packages · not covered yet
T1546.017 Udev Rules · not covered yet
T1546.018 Python Startup Hooks · not covered yet

The description, detection analytics and mitigations are reproduced from MITRE ATT&CK, version 19.2, under its terms of use. The checklists, hunts, labs and everything else linked here are this site’s.