Definition
Monitoring system files such as authentication databases, configuration files, system logs, and system executables for modification or tampering.
How it works
This technique ensures the integrity of system owned file resources. System files can impact the behavior below the user level.
Considerations
- Need to manage the size of log file analysis.
- False positives are a concern with this technique and filtering will need to be given additional thought.
- A baseline or snapshot of file checksums should be established for future comparison.
Implementation perspective
System File Analysis should be treated as a technical defensive capability rather than a product checkbox. In practice, teams should define the protected scope, the conditions under which the technique acts, and the observable evidence that demonstrates the intended behavior. For this technique, likely engineering context includes Operating System File, Service Application.
Use the technique to identify suspicious, unauthorized, or abnormal activity through observable evidence and repeatable analysis.
Questions to ask
- Which events, states, or artifacts must be observed for the analysis to work?
- What analytic logic, threshold, comparison, or signature turns observations into a finding?
- How are expected false positives, blind spots, and environmental variations documented?
- Who receives the result, and what action is expected when the technique produces a finding?
Evidence and validation
- Telemetry and data-source configuration records
- Analytic logic, thresholds, signatures, and version history
- Test cases demonstrating expected positive and negative results
- Alert, triage, escalation, and tuning records
Common failure patterns
- Required telemetry is missing, delayed, or transformed in a way that invalidates the analysis.
- The technique produces alerts without an accountable triage and response process.
- Detection coverage is claimed from product deployment without testing the relevant analytic behavior.
This implementation perspective is original Bare Metal Cyber educational content. It does not replace the official D3FEND definition or establish that a specific product implements the technique.
Technique hierarchy
Top-level family
Parent techniques
Direct child techniques
Artifacts and ontology entities
These relationships describe how D3FEND connects a defensive technique to artifacts or other ontology entities. They describe graph semantics, not a product certification.
Explicit technique relationships
Show inferred artifact relationship paths (2)
ATT&CK Enterprise mitigation relationships
These links come from the D3FEND ontology’s ATT&CK mitigation mapping. They help users navigate between the knowledge bases and do not guarantee mitigation effectiveness.
D3FEND note: M1047 scope is broad, touches on an wide variety of techniques in d3fend.
Offensive-technique relationships
These relationships are generated from D3FEND graph paths and are explicitly experimental. They should be treated as hypotheses for defensive analysis—not as proof that the technique prevents, detects, or removes an offensive behavior.
ATT&CK Enterprise (17)
ATT&CK for ICS (5)
Authoritative sources
- Open this technique on the official D3FEND website ↗
- Open the official ontology resources ↗
- CAR-2019-07-001: Access Permission Modification ↗MITRE · MITRE · ExternalKnowledgeBase
- CAR-2013-01-002: Autorun Differences ↗MITRE · MITRE · ExternalKnowledgeBase
- CAR-2016-04-002: User Activity from Clearing Event Logs ↗MITRE · MITRE · ExternalKnowledgeBase
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