Event Triggered Execution

Adversaries may establish persistence using system mechanisms that trigger execution based on specific events. Mobile operating systems have means to subscribe to events such as receiving an SMS message, device boot completion, or other device activities.

Adversaries may abuse these mechanisms as a means of maintaining persistent access to a victim via automatically and repeatedly executing malicious code. After gaining access to a victim’s system, adversaries may create or modify event triggers to point to malicious content that will be executed whenever the event trigger is invoked.

ID: T1624
Sub-techniques:  T1624.001
Tactic Type: Post-Adversary Device Access
Tactic: Persistence
Platforms: Android
Version: 1.1
Created: 30 March 2022
Last Modified: 20 March 2023

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
S1079 BOULDSPY

BOULDSPY uses a background service that can restart itself when the parent activity is stopped.[1]

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1006 Use Recent OS Version

Android 8 introduced additional limitations on the implicit intents that an application can register for.[2]

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component Detects
DS0041 Application Vetting Permissions Requests

Application vetting services can detect which broadcast intents an application registers for and which permissions it requests.

References