T1086
About this technique
PowerShell is a powerful interactive command-line interface and scripting environment included in the Windows operating system. (Citation: TechNet PowerShell) Adversaries can use PowerShell to perform a number of actions, including discovery of information and execution of code. Examples include the Start-Process cmdlet which can be used to run an executable and the Invoke-Command cmdlet which runs a command locally or on a remote computer.
Read the full ATT&CK description
PowerShell may also be used to download and run executables from the Internet, which can be executed from disk or in memory without touching disk.
Administrator permissions are required to use PowerShell to connect to remote systems.
A number of PowerShell-based offensive testing tools are available, including Empire, PowerSploit, (Citation: Powersploit) and PSAttack. (Citation: Github PSAttack)
PowerShell commands/scripts can also be executed without directly invoking the powershell.exe binary through interfaces to PowerShell's underlying System.Management.Automation assembly exposed through the .NET framework and Windows Common Language Interface (CLI). (Citation: Sixdub PowerPick Jan 2016)(Citation: SilentBreak Offensive PS Dec 2015) (Citation: Microsoft PSfromCsharp APR 2014)
Curated incident relationships
These associations come from maintained incident records. The recorded confidence is shown when the source record provides it.
Daily items linked through predicted CVEs
A Daily item appears here when it mentions a CVE whose triage artifact predicts this technique. This is not a verified ATT&CK mapping.
Predicted CVE associations
These backfilled or model-produced candidates come from the current triage artifact. They are informational, not official MITRE mappings.