ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Active Setup T1547.014

Adversaries may achieve persistence by adding a Registry key to the Active Setup of the local machine. Active Setup is a Windows mechanism that is used to execute programs when a user logs in. The value stored in the Registry key will be executed after a user logs into the computer. These programs will be executed under the context of the user and will have the account's associated permissions level.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 3 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized 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 (5 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
registry_path2eq 2"*\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Active Setup\\Installed Components*", "*\\Control\\Lsa*"
registry_value_name2eq 1, in 1"StubPath", "FullPrivilegeAuditing", "AuditBaseDirectories", "AuditBaseObjects"
Image1ends_with 1\secedit.exe
OriginalFileName1eq 1SeCEdit
CommandLine1match 1/cfg, /export, /db

Top indicator values (13 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.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
CommandLinematch/configure1
CommandLinematch/db1
OriginalFileNameeqSeCEdit1
CommandLinematch/cfg1
Imageends_with\secedit.exe1
CommandLinematch/export1
registry_value_nameeq"StubPath"1
registry_patheq"*\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Active Setup\\Installed Components*"1
registry_patheq"*\\Control\\Lsa*"1
registry_value_namein"AuditBaseDirectories"1
registry_value_namein"CrashOnAuditFail"1
registry_value_namein"FullPrivilegeAuditing"1
registry_value_namein"AuditBaseObjects"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 1 rule

Splunk 2 rules