Pre-OS Boot T1542

Adversaries may abuse Pre-OS Boot mechanisms as a way to establish persistence on a system. During the booting process of a computer, firmware and various startup services are loaded before the operating system. These programs control flow of execution before the operating system takes control.

Events covered

5 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 8 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 (8 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.

FieldRulesHowSample values
CommandLine3contains 1, in 1, ne 1* /S*, *-S*, delete, deletevalue, import
TargetFilename3contains 1, ends_with 1, eq 1, in 1*\\efi\\boot\\bootmgfw.efi, *\\efi\\boot\\bootx64.efi, .dat, \\efi\\boot\\, c:\windows\system32\wpbbin.exe
Image2ends_with 1, eq 1\bcdedit.exe, c:\windows\system32\wpbbin.exe
OriginalFileName2eq 2bcdedit.exe, mountvol.exe
process_name2eq 2mountvol.exe, winlogon.exe
DestinationPort1ne 10
Details1is_not_null 1
registry_path1ends_with 1\\system\\currentcontrolset\\control\\session...

Top indicator values (21 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.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
CommandLinecontains
delete
122
CommandLinecontains
deletevalue
1
CommandLinecontains
import
12
CommandLinecontains
network
12
CommandLinecontains
safeboot
13
CommandLinein
* /S*
1
CommandLinein
*-S*
1
CommandLinene
unknown
13
DestinationPortne
0
17
Imageends_with
\bcdedit.exe
15
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\wpbbin.exe
1
OriginalFileNameeq
bcdedit.exe
14
OriginalFileNameeq
mountvol.exe
1
TargetFilenamecontains
\\efi\\boot\\
1
TargetFilenameends_with
.dat
14
TargetFilenameeq
c:\windows\system32\wpbbin.exe
1
TargetFilenamein
*\\efi\\boot\\bootmgfw.efi
1
TargetFilenamein
*\\efi\\boot\\bootx64.efi
1
process_nameeq
mountvol.exe
12
process_nameeq
winlogon.exe
13
registry_pathends_with
\\system\\currentcontrolset\\control\\session manager\\bootexecute
1

Exclusions (5 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.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
All_Traffic.destin
0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1
1
All_Traffic.destin
10.0.0.0/8
1
All_Traffic.destin
127.0.0.1
1
All_Traffic.destin
172.16.0.0/12
1
All_Traffic.destin
192.168.0.0/16
1

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 3 rules

Splunk 5 rules