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Every technique
T1070.009Detection written

Clear Persistence

StealthESXi, Linux, macOS, Windows

Where this stands

One published detection covers this technique. Every one is unverified — no rule on Siemphony has been executed against real telemetry.

What the technique is

Adversaries may clear artifacts associated with previously established persistence on a host system to remove evidence of their activity. This may involve various actions, such as removing services, deleting executables, Modify Registry, Plist File Modification, or other methods of cleanup to prevent defenders from collecting evidence of their persistent presence. Adversaries may also delete accounts previously created to maintain persistence (i.e. Create Account). In some instances, artifacts of persistence may also be removed once an adversary’s persistence is executed in order to prevent errors with the new instance of the malware.

Read it on attack.mitre.org

What MITRE says you would watch

  • AN0113

    Detects adversary activity that removes persistence artifacts such as services, registry keys, scheduled tasks, user accounts, and binaries through commands like sc delete, schtasks /delete, or reg delete.

  • AN0114

    Detects removal of persistence artifacts such as crontab entries, systemd service units, and malicious user accounts through commands like crontab -r, rm /etc/systemd/system/*.service, or userdel.

  • AN0115

    Detects deletion of launch agents (~/Library/LaunchAgents/) and launch daemons (/Library/LaunchDaemons/), especially after suspicious process execution or when tied to known persistence methods.

Technique names and descriptions © MITRE ATT&CK®, CC BY 4.0. Not endorsed by MITRE.