M1039: Environment Variable Permissions
Restrict the modification of environment variables to authorized users and processes by enforcing strict permissions and policies. This ensures the integrity of environment variables, preventing adversaries from abusing or altering them for malicious purposes. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures:
Restrict Write Access:
- Use Case: Set file system-level permissions to restrict access to environment variable configuration files (e.g., `.bashrc`, `.bash_profile`, `.zshrc`, `systemd` service files). - Implementation: Configure `/etc/environment` or `/etc/profile` on Linux systems to only allow root or administrators to modify the file.
Secure Access Controls:
- Use Case: Limit access to environment variable settings in application deployment tools or CI/CD pipelines to authorized personnel. - Implementation: Use role-based access control (RBAC) in tools like Jenkins or GitLab to ensure only specific users can modify environment variables.
Restrict Process Scope:
- Use Case: Configure policies to ensure environment variables are only accessible to the processes they are explicitly intended for. - Implementation: Use containerized environments like Docker to isolate environment variables to specific containers and ensure they are not inherited by other processes.
Audit Environment Variable Changes:
- Use Case: Enable logging for changes to critical environment variables. - Implementation: Use `auditd` on Linux to monitor changes to files like `/etc/environment` or application-specific environment files.
Security context for executives and security teams
M1039: Environment Variable Permissions describes Restrict the modification of environment variables to authorized users and processes by enforcing strict permissions and policies. This ensures the integrity of environment variables, preventing adversaries from abusing or altering them for malicious purposes. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures: Restrict Write Access: - Use Case: Set file system-level permissions to restrict access to environment variable configuration files (e.g., `.bashrc`, `.bash_profile`, `.zshrc`, `systemd` servi...
Executive priority
M1039: Environment Variable Permissions is an official MITRE ATT&CK mitigation. 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 M1039: Environment Variable Permissions 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 M1039: Environment Variable Permissions 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.
Environment Variable Permissions
Restrict the modification of environment variables to authorized users and processes by enforcing strict permissions and policies. This ensures the integrity of environment variables, preventing adversaries from abusing or altering them for malicious purposes. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures:
Restrict Write Access:
- Use Case: Set file system-level permissions to restrict access to environment variable configuration files (e.g., `.bashrc`, `.bash_profile`, `.zshrc`, `systemd` service files). - Implementation: Configure `/etc/environment` or `/etc/profile` on Linux systems to only allow root or administrators to modify the file.
Secure Access Controls:
- Use Case: Limit access to environment variable settings in application deployment tools or CI/CD pipelines to authorized personnel. - Implementation: Use role-based access control (RBAC) in tools like Jenkins or GitLab to ensure only specific users can modify environment variables.
Restrict Process Scope:
- Use Case: Configure policies to ensure environment variables are only accessible to the processes they are explicitly intended for. - Implementation: Use containerized environments like Docker to isolate environment variables to specific containers and ensure they are not inherited by other processes.
Audit Environment Variable Changes:
- Use Case: Enable logging for changes to critical environment variables. - Implementation: Use `auditd` on Linux to monitor changes to files like `/etc/environment` or application-specific environment files.
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.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1690 | Prevent Command History Logging | Prevent users from changing the |
| Enterprise | T1070.003 | Clear Command HistorySub-technique | Making the environment variables associated with command history read only may ensure that the history is preserved.CitationSecuring bash history |
All related ATT&CK context
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(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.1 | Current bundle | 3e31eb8c47eb… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.1 | Older bundle | 3e31eb8c47eb… |
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-attackM1039Open source URL
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