Question Analysis

On Linux systems, an attacker may gain persistence by appending instructions to the global shell profile. Investigate process or file modification events to find evidence of text being added to /etc/profile, and identify the exact command invocation that carried out this change.

694b3cc8-6a78-4d35-9e74-0123d009e94b
Question ID
8/16
Models Correct
1
Valid Answer
50%
Success Rate
Reference Answer

Human-validated correct answer for this question

echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile
Model Performance Comparison

See how different AI models performed on this question

ModelAnswerKQL QueryStatusAttemptsTimeCost
gemini-2.5-flash-preview-04-17
No answer provided
No query generated
Incorrect
5
0.00s
0.0408
gpt-35-turbo
No answer provided
No query generated
Incorrect
5
0.00s
0.0109
gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09
No answer provided
No query generated
Incorrect
5
0.00s
0.2276
gpt-4.1
sh -c "echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile"
DeviceFileEvents | where (FolderPath == '/etc' and FileName == 'profile') or (FolderPath == '/etc/' and FileName == 'profile') or (FolderPath == '/etc/profile') or (FolderPath == '/etc/' and FileName == '/profile') // Also search where full path is embedded, in case FolderPath isn't split correctly | union (DeviceFileEvents | where FolderPath == '/etc' and FileName contains 'profile') | where ActionType in ('FileCreated', 'FileModified', 'FileWritten') | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, DeviceId, ActionType, FileName, FolderPath, InitiatingProcessAccountName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessId, InitiatingProcessSHA256, ReportId | order by TimeGenerated desc
Correct
3
13.61s
0.0346
gpt-4.1-finetuned
No answer provided
No query generated
Incorrect
5
0.00s
0.0456
gpt-4.1-mini
No answer provided
No query generated
Incorrect
5
0.00s
0.0052
gpt-4.1-nano
No answer provided
No query generated
Incorrect
5
0.00s
0.0015
gpt-4o
sh -c "echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile"
DeviceFileEvents | where ActionType in ("FileModified", "FileCreated") | where FolderPath startswith "/etc" and FileName == "profile" | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, InitiatingProcessAccountDomain, InitiatingProcessAccountName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, ActionType, DeviceId
Correct
4
28.33s
0.0432
grok-3-beta
echo
let linuxDevices = DeviceInfo | where OSPlatform == "Linux" | project DeviceId, DeviceName, OSPlatform; DeviceFileEvents | where FolderPath has "/etc/profile" or FileName has "profile" | where ActionType in ("FileModified", "FileCreated", "FileRenamed") | join kind=inner (linuxDevices) on DeviceId | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, ActionType, FolderPath, FileName, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessAccountName | union ( DeviceProcessEvents | where ProcessCommandLine has "/etc/profile" or InitiatingProcessCommandLine has "/etc/profile" | join kind=inner (linuxDevices) on DeviceId | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, ActionType, ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessAccountName ) | order by TimeGenerated desc
Incorrect
3
28.63s
0.0799
grok-3-mini-beta
sh -c "echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile"
DeviceFileEvents | where ActionType in~ ('FileModified', 'FileCreated') | join kind=inner (DeviceInfo | where OSPlatform == 'Linux' | project DeviceId, DeviceName) on DeviceId | where FolderPath has '/etc/profile' or (FolderPath has '/etc' and FileName has 'profile') | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FolderPath, FileName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessFileName | order by TimeGenerated desc | limit 100
Correct
5
62.98s
0.0080
o1-high
No answer provided
No query generated
Incorrect
5
0.00s
0.8207
o1-low
sh -c "echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile"
let LinuxDevices = DeviceInfo | where OSPlatform == "Linux" | distinct DeviceId; DeviceFileEvents | where DeviceId in (LinuxDevices) | where ActionType in ("FileModified","FileCreated") | where FolderPath has "/etc" and FileName == "profile" | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FolderPath, FileName, ActionType, InitiatingProcessAccountDomain, InitiatingProcessAccountName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessParentFileName, InitiatingProcessParentId | order by TimeGenerated desc
Correct
2
91.99s
0.4921
o3-mini-high
sh-c "echo '#HellofromAtomicRedTeamT1546.004'>>/etc/profile"
let fileModEvents = DeviceFileEvents | where FileName == "profile" | where FolderPath has "/etc" // Look for modification or append actions (case-insensitive) or additional fields mentioning append | where ActionType has_any ("Modified", "modified", "Append", "append") or tostring(AdditionalFields) has_cs "append" | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FolderPath, FileName, CommandLine = InitiatingProcessCommandLine, ActionType, AdditionalFields; let processModEvents = DeviceProcessEvents // Search for redirection operator (>>), allowing any whitespace between >> and /etc/profile | where coalesce(ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessCommandLine) matches regex @".*>>\s*/etc/profile.*" | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FolderPath, FileName, CommandLine = coalesce(ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessCommandLine), ActionType; fileModEvents | union processModEvents | sort by TimeGenerated desc
Correct
4
88.62s
0.0417
o3-mini-low
sh -c "echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile"
union ( // File modification events on /etc/profile DeviceFileEvents | where (FolderPath == "/etc" or FolderPath has "/etc") and FileName =~ "profile" and ActionType contains "Modified" | extend CommandInvocation = InitiatingProcessCommandLine, Source = "FileModificationEvent" ), ( // Process events with command line that appends to /etc/profile using redirection DeviceProcessEvents | where ProcessCommandLine contains ">>" and ProcessCommandLine contains "/etc/profile" | extend CommandInvocation = ProcessCommandLine, Source = "ProcessEvent" ) | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FolderPath, FileName, ActionType, CommandInvocation, Source | order by TimeGenerated desc
Correct
3
45.50s
0.0307
o4-mini-high
sh -c "echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile"
let LinuxDeviceIds = DeviceInfo | where OSPlatform startswith "Linux" | distinct DeviceId; let FileMods = DeviceFileEvents | where DeviceId in (LinuxDeviceIds) | where FolderPath has "/etc" and FileName == "profile" | where ActionType has "Modified" or ActionType has "Overwritten" | extend FilePath = strcat(FolderPath, "/", FileName) | project TimeGenerated, DeviceId, DeviceName, FilePath, ActionType, InitiatingProcessId; let FileModCommands = FileMods | join kind=leftouter ( DeviceProcessEvents | where DeviceId in (LinuxDeviceIds) | project DeviceId, ProcessId, InitiatingProcessAccountDomain, InitiatingProcessAccountName, InitiatingProcessFileName, ProcessCreationTime, ProcessCommandLine ) on DeviceId, $left.InitiatingProcessId == $right.ProcessId | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FilePath, ActionType, ProcessCreationTime, InitiatingProcessAccountDomain, InitiatingProcessAccountName, InitiatingProcessFileName, ProcessCommandLine; let DirectAppends = DeviceProcessEvents | where DeviceId in (LinuxDeviceIds) | where ProcessCommandLine has ">> /etc/profile" or ProcessCommandLine has "tee -a /etc/profile" | project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FilePath = "/etc/profile", ActionType = "Direct Append", ProcessCreationTime, InitiatingProcessAccountDomain, InitiatingProcessAccountName, InitiatingProcessFileName, ProcessCommandLine; FileModCommands | union DirectAppends | sort by TimeGenerated desc
Correct
2
149.70s
0.0337
o4-mini-low
sh -c "echo '# Hello from Atomic Red Team T1546.004' >> /etc/profile"
let fileModifications = DeviceFileEvents | where ActionType == "FileModified" | where FolderPath == "/etc" and FileName == "profile" | project TimeGenerated, SourceEvent = "FileModified", DeviceName, InitiatingProcessAccountName, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessId, ProcessCommandLine = InitiatingProcessCommandLine; let processWrites = DeviceProcessEvents | where ProcessCommandLine matches regex @"(>>|tee).*?/etc/profile" | project TimeGenerated, SourceEvent = "ProcessWrite", DeviceName, InitiatingProcessAccountName = AccountName, InitiatingProcessFileName = FileName, InitiatingProcessId = ProcessId, ProcessCommandLine; union fileModifications, processWrites | sort by TimeGenerated desc
Correct
1
623.79s
0.0101