TA0106: Impair Process Control
The adversary is trying to manipulate, disable, or damage physical control processes.
Impair Process Control consists of techniques that adversaries use to disrupt control logic and cause determinantal effects to processes being controlled in the target environment. Targets of interest may include active procedures or parameters that manipulate the physical environment. These techniques can also include prevention or manipulation of reporting elements and control logic. If an adversary has modified process functionality, then they may also obfuscate the results, which are often self-revealing in their impact on the outcome of a product or the environment. The direct physical control these techniques exert may also threaten the safety of operators and downstream users, which can prompt response mechanisms. Adversaries may follow up with or use Inhibit Response Function techniques in tandem, to assist with the successful abuse of control processes to result in Impact.
Analyst context for executives and security teams
Impair Process Control is an ICS ATT&CK tactic focused on adversary behavior that changes, disables, or damages the physical control processes an organization depends on. For executives and operations leaders, the significance is not only cyber disruption: the behavior can affect production outcomes, environmental conditions, operator safety, and downstream users. It is a useful planning category for asking whether cyber monitoring, engineering controls, incident response, and safety response are aligned around the same physical process risks.
Executive priority
Treat this as a business-continuity and safety-risk category, not just a SOC detection problem. Leaders should ask which physical processes would create the greatest operational, safety, environmental, or compliance consequences if control logic, process parameters, or reporting elements were manipulated. Priority should go to validating resilience around the most critical procedures and parameters, and to ensuring incident decision-making includes both cyber responders and operational/safety stakeholders. The supplied ATT&CK object also notes that adversaries may pair this behavior with Inhibit Response Function activity and ultimately pursue Impact, so executive planning should consider whether response mechanisms and reporting can be trusted during a process anomaly.
Technical view
For SOC, detection engineering, and incident response teams, this tactic should drive validation of visibility across control logic changes, process parameter changes, reporting integrity, and observable process outcomes. Because MITRE provides no specific detection text or platform list for this tactic, teams should map their own ICS architecture and determine where process-control changes, engineering activity, controller logic, operator actions, and process telemetry are recorded. IR playbooks should include procedures for reconciling cyber evidence with engineering evidence when physical outcomes appear inconsistent with reported status.
Likely telemetry
- Control logic change records where available
- Process parameter and setpoint change records
- Engineering workstation or operator workstation activity logs where available
- Controller, control system, or process historian data where available
- Alarms, events, and reporting-element data tied to controlled processes
Detection direction
- Validate whether monitoring can detect unauthorized or unexpected changes to active procedures, parameters, control logic, or reporting elements.
- Compare reported process state against independent process measurements where available, because the ATT&CK description notes that reporting elements may be manipulated.
- Tune detections with operational context to reduce false positives from legitimate engineering changes, maintenance windows, and approved process adjustments.
- Include scenarios where process impairment is paired with inhibited or manipulated response functions, as referenced in the official description.
- Do not assume SOC telemetry alone is sufficient; confirm what evidence exists in engineering and operations systems.
Mitigation priorities
- Prioritize identification of critical physical processes, parameters, procedures, and reporting paths that would create the highest safety or continuity risk if manipulated.
- Strengthen governance over approved control logic and process parameter changes, including review and evidence retention where supported by the environment.
- Ensure incident response plans include operations, engineering, safety, and cyber roles for process-control anomalies.
- Validate that reporting and alarm paths used for response decisions are trustworthy or can be independently corroborated.
- Use tabletop and validation exercises to test how teams would distinguish legitimate process variation from malicious manipulation without relying on unsupported assumptions.
Analyst notes and limits
This object is a tactic, not a specific technique, so it is best used for risk framing, coverage assessment, and exercise planning. The most important local work is mapping this tactic to the organization’s actual controlled processes, engineering workflows, telemetry sources, and safety-response mechanisms.
MITRE did not provide detection guidance, platforms, aliases, labels, or relationship context in the supplied fields. This take therefore avoids claims about specific technologies, active exploitation, attribution, or guaranteed detection coverage. Local architecture and operational evidence are required to turn this tactic into concrete detections or controls.
Impair Process Control
The adversary is trying to manipulate, disable, or damage physical control processes.
Impair Process Control consists of techniques that adversaries use to disrupt control logic and cause determinantal effects to processes being controlled in the target environment. Targets of interest may include active procedures or parameters that manipulate the physical environment. These techniques can also include prevention or manipulation of reporting elements and control logic. If an adversary has modified process functionality, then they may also obfuscate the results, which are often self-revealing in their impact on the outcome of a product or the environment. The direct physical control these techniques exert may also threaten the safety of operators and downstream users, which can prompt response mechanisms. Adversaries may follow up with or use Inhibit Response Function techniques in tandem, to assist with the successful abuse of control processes to result in Impact.
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
All related ATT&CK context
No relationships are available in the current normalized data for this object.
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Current bundle | f98f593d0403… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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mitre-attack TA0106Open source URL
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