DC0043: Firewall Disable
The deactivation, misconfiguration, or complete stoppage of firewall services, either on a host or in a cloud control plane. Such activity may involve turning off firewalls, modifying rules to disable protection, or deleting firewall-related configurations and activity logs. Examples:
- Disabling Host-Based Firewalls: Stopping the Windows Defender Firewall service or using `iptables -F` to flush all rules on a Linux system. - Cloud Firewall Modification or Deactivation: Modifying or deleting security group rules in AWS or disabling a network firewall in Azure. - Activity Log Deletion: Writing or deleting entries in Azure Firewall Activity Logs to hide unauthorized firewall changes. - Temporary Disable for Malicious Operations: Temporarily disabling a firewall to allow malicious files or traffic, then re-enabling it to avoid detection. - Using Command-Line Tools to Stop Firewalls: Running commands like `Set-NetFirewallProfile -Enabled False on Windows or systemctl stop ufw` on Linux.
This data component can be collected through the following measures:
Cloud Control Plane
- Azure Activity Logs: - Enable logging of administrative actions, such as stopping or modifying Azure Firewall configurations. - Use Azure Monitor to track specific firewall-related actions, including disabling or rule deletion. - AWS CloudTrail Logs: - Monitor `RevokeSecurityGroupIngress` or `RevokeSecurityGroupEgress` events to detect rule changes in AWS Security Groups. - Google Cloud Platform Logs: - Collect logs from the Firewall Rules resource in Google Cloud Operations Suite to detect rule deletions or modifications.
Host-Level Firewalls
- Windows Firewall Event Logs: - Enable logging of firewall state changes: - Security Event ID 2004: Firewall service stopped. - Security Event ID 2005: Firewall service started. - Use Sysmon for process creation events tied to firewall commands or scripts (Sysmon Event ID 1). - Linux Firewall Logs: Use auditd to track commands like iptables, firewalld, or ufw: `auditctl -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S execve -k firewall_disable` - macOS Firewall: Monitor changes to the macOS Application Firewall using the log show command.
Network-Level Monitoring
- IDS/IPS Alerts: Deploy IDS/IPS systems to monitor abnormal traffic flows that could indicate firewall disablement. - NetFlow Data: Analyze NetFlow or packet capture data for traffic patterns inconsistent with firewall enforcement.
SIEM and CSPM Tools
- SIEM Integration: Use tools like Splunk or QRadar to centralize and analyze firewall disablement events from both hosts and cloud platforms. - Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): Use CSPM solutions to monitor misconfigurations and track deactivation of critical cloud services like firewalls.
Security context for executives and security teams
DC0043: Firewall Disable describes The deactivation, misconfiguration, or complete stoppage of firewall services, either on a host or in a cloud control plane. Such activity may involve turning off firewalls, modifying rules to disable protection, or deleting firewall-related configurations and activity logs. Examples: - Disabling Host-Based Firewalls: Stopping the Windows Defender Firewall service or using `iptables -F` to flush all rules on a Linux system. - Cloud Firewall Modification or Deactivation: Modifying or deleting security group rules in...
Executive priority
DC0043: Firewall Disable is an official MITRE ATT&CK data component. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate DC0043: Firewall Disable by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (the platforms named in the official object), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether DC0043: Firewall Disable appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Firewall Disable
The deactivation, misconfiguration, or complete stoppage of firewall services, either on a host or in a cloud control plane. Such activity may involve turning off firewalls, modifying rules to disable protection, or deleting firewall-related configurations and activity logs. Examples:
- Disabling Host-Based Firewalls: Stopping the Windows Defender Firewall service or using `iptables -F` to flush all rules on a Linux system. - Cloud Firewall Modification or Deactivation: Modifying or deleting security group rules in AWS or disabling a network firewall in Azure. - Activity Log Deletion: Writing or deleting entries in Azure Firewall Activity Logs to hide unauthorized firewall changes. - Temporary Disable for Malicious Operations: Temporarily disabling a firewall to allow malicious files or traffic, then re-enabling it to avoid detection. - Using Command-Line Tools to Stop Firewalls: Running commands like `Set-NetFirewallProfile -Enabled False on Windows or systemctl stop ufw` on Linux.
This data component can be collected through the following measures:
Cloud Control Plane
- Azure Activity Logs: - Enable logging of administrative actions, such as stopping or modifying Azure Firewall configurations. - Use Azure Monitor to track specific firewall-related actions, including disabling or rule deletion. - AWS CloudTrail Logs: - Monitor `RevokeSecurityGroupIngress` or `RevokeSecurityGroupEgress` events to detect rule changes in AWS Security Groups. - Google Cloud Platform Logs: - Collect logs from the Firewall Rules resource in Google Cloud Operations Suite to detect rule deletions or modifications.
Host-Level Firewalls
- Windows Firewall Event Logs: - Enable logging of firewall state changes: - Security Event ID 2004: Firewall service stopped. - Security Event ID 2005: Firewall service started. - Use Sysmon for process creation events tied to firewall commands or scripts (Sysmon Event ID 1). - Linux Firewall Logs: Use auditd to track commands like iptables, firewalld, or ufw: `auditctl -a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S execve -k firewall_disable` - macOS Firewall: Monitor changes to the macOS Application Firewall using the log show command.
Network-Level Monitoring
- IDS/IPS Alerts: Deploy IDS/IPS systems to monitor abnormal traffic flows that could indicate firewall disablement. - NetFlow Data: Analyze NetFlow or packet capture data for traffic patterns inconsistent with firewall enforcement.
SIEM and CSPM Tools
- SIEM Integration: Use tools like Splunk or QRadar to centralize and analyze firewall disablement events from both hosts and cloud platforms. - Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): Use CSPM solutions to monitor misconfigurations and track deactivation of critical cloud services like firewalls.
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(3)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20.0 | 2.0 | Older bundle | 5674743c1c7f… | ||
| 19.2 | 2.0 | Current bundle | 5674743c1c7f… | ||
| 19.1 | 2.0 | Older bundle | 5674743c1c7f… |
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.
- [1]mitre-attackDC0043Open source URL
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