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https://github.com/swisscom/powersponse

PowerSponse is a PowerShell module focused on targeted containment and remediation during incident response.
https://github.com/swisscom/powersponse

cleanup containment incident-response powershell powershell-modules remediation

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PowerSponse is a PowerShell module focused on targeted containment and remediation during incident response.

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![PowerSponse - PowerShell module for containment and remediation](media/powersponse.png)



# PowerSponse - PowerShell Module for Containment and Remediation



PowerSponse is a PowerShell module for targeted containment and remediation

during incident response.



Please see [Command Documentation](docs/PowerSponse.md),

[Wiki](https://github.com/swisscom/PowerSponse/wiki) and

[CHANGELOG](CHANGELOG.md).



***



* [What is PowerSponse?](#what-is-powersponse)

* [Example](#example)

* [Requirements](#requirements)

* [Installation](#installation)

* [Usage](#usage)

    * [Authentication](#authentication)

    * [Import](#import)

    * [Cmdlets](#cmdlets)

    * [Help](#help)

* [Contributing](#contributing)

* [Inspiration](#inspiration)

* [References](#references)



***



## What is PowerSponse?



PowerSponse is a PowerShell module for targeted containment and remediation.



The following features are implemented in PowerSponse:

* Commands for containment and remediation which can be easily extended with

  the used plugin system.

* Handling of **literal or regular expressions** for searching or killing processes, 

  files and directories, searching for or deactivating scheduled tasks or services. 

* **Implementation of a rule engine** (**[CoRe

  rules](https://github.com/swisscom/PowerSponse/wiki/CoRe-rules)** which can be 

  used by `Invoke-PowerSponse` or `New-CleanupPackage` to reuse predefined

  actions, e.g. a CoRe rule per malware family). This should be the 

  [YARA](https://virustotal.github.io/yara/) or [SIGMA](https://github.com/Neo23x0/sigma) 

  equivalent but for containment.

* Use a CoRe rule for **specific cleanup against one or more remote** hosts using

    `Invoke-PowerSponse` or use `New-CleanupPackage` to **build a cleanup

    package** and deploy it to a remote host which is not reachable via network.



PowerSponse can be used in the **containment and remediation phase (deny, degrade and disrupt)** 

of an incident. Of course, the containment part contradicts with the forensic soundness, which

means that the source evidence (infected machine) is not altered in any

way. The question is always: Would you like to limit the damage during an attack

and control the communication flow to the attacker's servers or would you

like to collect more information from the attacker by just passive monitoring?



Different methods are used to connect and run the commands on remote hosts:

WMI, WinRM, PsExec, Windows' system tools.



Every action outputs the same PowerSponse object format for easy post processing: 

which command was run, target hostname, timestamp and status of the command.



The following use cases were in mind when implementing PowerSponse:

* Cleanup ***single artifact*** on ***one specific host***: Run single command

	directly against that host.

* Cleanup ***single artifact*** on ***multiple hosts***: Run single command

    against multiple hosts. Provide the list of computers with the 

    `-ComputerName host1,host2,...` or the `-ComputerList host.txt` parameter.

* Cleanup ***multiple artifacts*** on ***one specific or multiple host***: Run multiple commands

	against one or multiple host manually or use a PowerShell script with 

	all the needed PowerSponse cmdlets and concatenate the output for easy

	post processing. An other way would be to use `Invoke-PowerSponse` or 

	`New-CleanupPackage` with a 

	[CoRe rule](https://github.com/swisscom/PowerSponse/wiki/CoRe-rules).



## Example



Dridex (yeah, old stuff, the example is from 2016) creates some files, injects itself into

explorer and adds a scheduled task. Taken from [Detecting and removing

Dridex](http://lpine.org/2016/06/detecting-removing-dridex/), the manual steps

for containment are as follows:



> 1. Kill explorer.exe process using taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

> 2. Remove all tmp files from C:\users\username\data\locallow, del

> 	%userprofile%\appdata\locallow\*.tmp. There could be more than one user on

> 	a computer and you’d better traverse through all user profile folders to check

> 	for Dridex files.

> 3. Remove Dridex task using schtasks /delete /tn “User_Feed_Synchronization-{Dridex-Random-Hex-GUID}” /f

> 4. Reboot the PC.



With PowerSponse you could use these cmdlets directly (`@()` is used to

concatenate the output of all the commands).



``` powershell

PS> $ret = @()

PS> $ret += Stop-Process -ComputerName comp1 -Name "explorer"

PS> $ret += Remove-File -ComputerName comp1 -Path "C:\users\*\appdata\locallow\*.tmp

PS> $ret += Disable-ScheduledTask -ComputerName comp1 -TaskName "User_F.*_S.*-\{.{8}-(.{4}-){3}.{12}\}"

PS> $ret += Restart-Computer -ComputerName comp1

PS> $ret | select time, action, computername, status, reason



Time                Action                  ComputerName  Status Reason

----                ------                  ------------  ------ ------

08.01.2017 16:41:36 Stop-Process            comp1         pass   Stopped

08.01.2017 16:41:47 Remove-File             comp1         pass   Removed

08.01.2017 16:41:52 Disable-ScheduledTask   comp1         pass   Disabled

08.01.2017 16:41:54 Restart-Computer        comp1         pass   Rebooted

```



Or create a corresponding

[CoRe rule](https://github.com/swisscom/PowerSponse/wiki/CoRe-rules) and use

the rule in combination with `Invoke-PowerSponse` or `New-CleanupPackage`.



``` json

{

    "PowerSponse": [

        {

            "id" : "12341234-1234-1234-1234-123412341234",

            "name" : "Dridex June 2016",

            "date" : "2016-06-01",

            "author" : "Mr. Evil",

            "description" : "Dridex cleanup rule.",

            "action" : [

                {

                    "type" : "ProcessItem",

                    "name" : "explorer.exe"

                },

                {

                    "type" : "FileItem",

                    "Path" : "C:\\users\\*\\appdata\\locallow\\*.tmp"

                },

                {

                    "type" : "TaskItem",

                    "searchstring" : "User_F.*_S.*-\\{.{8}-(.{4}-){3}.{12}\\}"

                },

                {

                    "type" : "ComputerItem",

                    "action" : "reboot"

                }

            ]

        }

    ]

}

```



``` powershell

PS> Invoke-PowerSponse -ComputerName comp1 -Rule dridex-201606.json

```



``` powershell

PS> New-CleanupPackage -Rule dridex-201606.json

```



Instead of running the commands directly against the target computers, you can use

`New-CleanupPackage` which concatenates all scripts and commands into a new 

PowerShell script and therefore allows an offline deployment to the 

target host without having a direct network connection.



## Requirements



To run PowerSponse commands via network you need remote administrator rights

and need some ports open on the target machine, depending which

method (WinRM, WMI, PsExec, ...) the remote management protocols use 135 TCP, 139 TCP, 445

TCP, 5985 TCP, 5986 TCP. Alternatively, run the commands and PowerSponse

scripts directly on the target (localhost) by importing the module on the

target machine or by using the `New-CleanupPackage` in combination with a 

CoRe rule.



## Installation



Update March 2022: Install [PowerSponse from PowerShell Gallery](https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/PowerSponse) was only supported until March 2022. Afterwards, only manual install through GitHub is provided. See [CHANGELOG](CHANGELOG.md) for more details about versions.



* **Install PowerSponse from Github**



    * Clone or download the repo into your module path folder, usually

      _~\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\modules_ on Windows (see _$env:PSModulePath_).

    * Clone or download the files to any other folder (could also be a share).

    * The location changes how the module is imported. See import below.

    * **Make sure to unblock the files** - either using the command below or by opening 

      the properties page of all the the .psd1 and .psm1 files and checking 

      "Unblock" at the bottom.



      ``` powershell

      gci  -Recurse -Include *.ps1,*.psm1,*.psd1 | Unblock-File

      ```



* **OPTIONALLY** Download the needed binaries (only if you need them for the used commands)

  or put them manually in the bin folder. See README and binary-urls.txt

  inside the \bin folder. By default only some Sysinternal tools are

  downloaded (e.g. pskill, psexec, ...).



  ```

  cd \bin

  powershell -ep bypass .\DownloadBinariesToCurrentDir.ps1

  ```



## Usage



Use `command -` to tab between the available parameters or use 

`command -` to display a list of all paremeters. 



**Disclaimer:** _The command interface is inconsistent, that means that some

commands can have a `-Credential` parameter (WMI and WinRM can handle

credential objects) and other commands which rely on external tools do not

(passwords in logs are bad, very bad). Some commands have a WMI

implementation, others do only have an implementation using an external tool.

Read through the docs, try the commands out and make a pull request for

missing functionality. There are a lot of missing commands...That said, enjoy

mitigating the evil._



### Authentication



* Start a shell in escalated mode with your remote admin account

  (shift-right-click and use "run as different user")

* Start a shell with your user and store your credentials in a credential

  variable and pass it to the commands with `-Credential`



    ```powershell

    $creds = Microsoft.PowerShell.Security\get-credential

    ```



### Import



If PowerSponse was saved inside the module path run the following command:



``` powershell

Import-Module PowerSponse -force

```



If PowerSponse was saved outside the module path run the command:



``` powershell

Import-Module \PowerSponse.psd1 -force

```



### Cmdlets



Please see [docs](docs/PowerSponse.md) and the wiki for the list of all available commands.



Use the common parameters like _-WhatIf_ or _-Verbose_ for troubleshooting and to

see what the commands would do. _WhatIf_ is implemented for every function which

makes any changes.



List available PowerSponse commands.



``` powershell

get-command -Module PowerSponse

```



List all PowerSponse commands for tasks



``` powershell

get-command -Module PowerSponse | sls task

```



### Help



Use `help ` to get the help for a command.



```powershell

PS> help Get-ScheduledTask



NAME

    Get-ScheduledTask



OVERVIEW

    Find scheduled tasks based on regex.



SYNTAX

    Get-ScheduledTask [-BinPath ] [-ComputerList ] [-ComputerName ] [-Confirm] [-Credential ] [-PrintXML] [-Session []>] [-WhatIf] [-NoRemoteRegistry] [-OnlyTaskName] [-SearchString ] [-Method ] [-OnlineCheck] []



DESCRIPTION

    Find scheduled tasks based on a literal or regex.

...

```



Use `help  -Examples` to get examples for a command.



```powershell

PS> help Get-ScheduledTask -Examples



NAME

    Get-ScheduledTask



OVERVIEW

    Find scheduled tasks based on literal or regex.



    Example 1



    PS> Get-ScheduledTask -SearchString ".*-S-\d{1}-\d{1}" -NoRemoteRegistry -OnlyTaskName



    Time         : 06.01.2017 10:31:29

    Action       : Get-ScheduledTask

    ComputerName : localhost

    Arguments    : TaskName: .*-S-\d{1}-\d{1}

    Status       : pass

    Reason       : \G2MUpdateTask-S-1-5-21-111111111-2222222222-333333333-444444 ; \G2MUploadTask-S-1-5-21-111111111-2222222222-333333333-444444



...

```

Some commands have the same name as the native cmdlets (e.g. `Stop-Service`). For these cmdlets you

need to prefix the cmdlet name with the specific module when using help: `help powersponse\stop-service`.



## Contributing



See [CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md) for general guidelines.



## Inspiration

* [PowerForensics](https://github.com/Invoke-IR/PowerForensics)

* [Kansa](https://github.com/davehull/Kansa/)

* [Invoke-LiveResponse](https://github.com/davidhowell-tx/Invoke-LiveResponse)

* [Empire](https://github.com/adaptivethreat/Empire)

* [PowerSploit](https://github.com/PowerShellMafia/PowerSploit/)

* [AutoRuns PowerShell Module](https://github.com/p0w3rsh3ll/AutoRuns)



## References

* [PowerForensics and Remote Machines ](https://davidhowelltx.blogspot.ch/2016/04/powerforensics-and-remote-machines.html)

* [Invoke-IR](http://www.invoke-ir.com/)

* [Invoke-Command / PowerForensics PowerShell Remoting Usage](https://github.com/Invoke-IR/PowerForensics/issues/143)

* [PowerShell AutoRuns](https://github.com/p0w3rsh3ll/AutoRuns)

* [CimSweep](https://github.com/PowerShellMafia/CimSweep)

* [p0wnedShell](https://github.com/Cn33liz/p0wnedShell)

* [BloodHound](https://github.com/adaptivethreat/BloodHound)

* [PowerShell Remoting and Incident Response](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/powershell-remoting-incident-response-matthew-green)