Adversaries may abuse legitimate extensible development features of servers to establish persistent access to systems. Enterprise server applications may include features that allow developers to write and install software or scripts to extend the functionality of the main application. Adversaries may install malicious components to extend and abuse server applications.
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1047 | Audit |
Regularly check component software on critical services that adversaries may target for persistence to verify the integrity of the systems and identify if unexpected changes have been made. |
| M1045 | Code Signing |
Ensure all application component binaries are signed by the correct application developers. |
| M1042 | Disable or Remove Feature or Program |
Consider disabling software components from servers when possible to prevent abuse by adversaries.[1] |
| M1026 | Privileged Account Management |
Do not allow administrator accounts that have permissions to add component software on these services to be used for day-to-day operations that may expose them to potential adversaries on unprivileged systems. |
| M1024 | Restrict Registry Permissions |
Consider using Group Policy to configure and block modifications to service and other critical server parameters in the Registry.[2] |
| M1018 | User Account Management |
Enforce the principle of least privilege by limiting privileges of user accounts so only authorized accounts can modify and/or add server software components.[3] |
Consider monitoring application logs for abnormal behavior that may indicate suspicious installation of application software components. Consider monitoring file locations associated with the installation of new application software components such as paths from which applications typically load such extensible components.
Process monitoring may be used to detect servers components that perform suspicious actions such as running cmd.exe or accessing files. Log authentication attempts to the server and any unusual traffic patterns to or from the server and internal network. [4]