T1569
System Services
Windows · macOS · Linux2 pieces on this siteT1569 on attack.mitre.org
Adversaries may abuse system services or daemons to execute commands or programs. Adversaries can execute malicious content by interacting with or creating services either locally or remotely. Many services are set to run at boot, which can aid in achieving persistence (Create or Modify System Process), but adversaries can also abuse services for one-time or temporary execution.
If this is happening now
Checklists and playbooks to open while the alert is still live.
Suspicious execution on an endpoint
An EDR alert, an unexplained process, or a user reporting something odd.
Practise it
Labs, timelines, evidence packs and tabletop scenarios to work before you need to.
Guided lab: a service that existed for nine seconds
Remote execution over the admin share, reconstructed from the target. Tie four events in three logs into one action, work back to the host it came from, and handle the version where the service is not called PSEXESVC.
Seventeen hours at Calderbrook: from a password spray to data leaving
A constructed intrusion laid out against the clock and the ATT&CK tactics, following the same four stages as the guided labs. Eleven events, one of them inferred, and one tactic conspicuously missing.
how MITRE says to see it
Detection Strategy for System Services across OS platforms.
- Monitor for abnormal creation or modification of Windows services (e.g., via sc.exe, PowerShell, or API calls) that load non-standard executables. Correlate registry changes in service keys with service creation events and process execution to detect service abuse for persistence or execution.
- Detect unusual invocations of systemctl, service, or init scripts creating or modifying daemons. Monitor audit logs for execution of binaries from unexpected paths linked to service start/stop activity.
- Monitor launchd service definitions and property list (.plist) modifications for non-standard executables. Detect unauthorized processes registered as launch daemons or agents.
what reduces it
- M1040 Behavior Prevention on Endpoint. On Windows 10, enable Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules to block processes created by PsExec from running.
- M1018 User Account Management. Prevent users from installing their own launch agents or launch daemons.
- M1022 Restrict File and Directory Permissions. Ensure that high permission level service binaries cannot be replaced or modified by users with a lower permission level.
- M1026 Privileged Account Management. Ensure that permissions disallow services that run at a higher permissions level from being created or interacted with by a user with a lower permission level.