S0145: POWERSOURCE
POWERSOURCE is a PowerShell backdoor that is a heavily obfuscated and modified version of the publicly available tool DNS_TXT_Pwnage. It was observed in February 2017 in spearphishing campaigns against personnel involved with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings at various organizations. The malware was delivered when macros were enabled by the victim and a VBS script was dropped. [1] [2]
Security context for executives and security teams
S0145: POWERSOURCE describes [POWERSOURCE](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0145) is a PowerShell backdoor that is a heavily obfuscated and modified version of the publicly available tool DNS_TXT_Pwnage. It was observed in February 2017 in spearphishing campaigns against personnel involved with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings at various organizations. The malware was delivered when macros were enabled by the victim and a VBS script was dropped. (Citation: FireEye FIN7 March 2017) (Citation: Cisco DNSMessenger M...
Executive priority
S0145: POWERSOURCE is an official MITRE ATT&CK software. 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 S0145: POWERSOURCE by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (Windows), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
- Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry
Detection direction
- Validate whether S0145: POWERSOURCE 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.
POWERSOURCE
POWERSOURCE is a PowerShell backdoor that is a heavily obfuscated and modified version of the publicly available tool DNS_TXT_Pwnage. It was observed in February 2017 in spearphishing campaigns against personnel involved with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings at various organizations. The malware was delivered when macros were enabled by the victim and a VBS script was dropped. [1] [2]
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 | T1059.001 | PowerShellSub-technique | POWERSOURCE is a PowerShell backdoor.[1][2] |
| Enterprise | T1012 | Query Registry | POWERSOURCE queries Registry keys in preparation for setting Run keys to achieve persistence.[2] |
| Enterprise | T1547.001 | Registry Run Keys / Startup FolderSub-technique | POWERSOURCE achieves persistence by setting a Registry Run key, with the path depending on whether the victim account has user or administrator access.[2] |
| Enterprise | T1564.004 | NTFS File AttributesSub-technique | If the victim is using PowerShell 3.0 or later, POWERSOURCE writes its decoded payload to an alternate data stream (ADS) named kernel32.dll that is saved in |
| Enterprise | T1071.004 | DNSSub-technique | POWERSOURCE uses DNS TXT records for C2.[1][2] |
| Enterprise | T1105 | Ingress Tool Transfer | POWERSOURCE has been observed being used to download TEXTMATE and the Cobalt Strike Beacon payload onto victims.[1] |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0046: FIN7
FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has been active since 2013. FIN7 has targeted the retail, restaurant, hospitality, software, consulting, financial services, medical equipment, cloud services, media, food and beverage, transportation, pharmaceutical, and utilities industries in the United States. A portion of FIN7 was operated out of a front company called Combi Security and often used point-of-sale malware for targeting efforts. Since 2020, FIN7 shifted operations to big game hunting (BGH), including use of REvil ransomware and their own Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), Darkside. FIN7 may be linked to the Carbanak Group, but multiple threat groups have been observed using Carbanak, leading these groups to be tracked separately.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
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(3)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20.0 | 1.1 | Current bundle | 7c4cac3e8992… | ||
| 19.2 | 1.1 | Older bundle | 7c4cac3e8992… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.1 | Older bundle | 7c4cac3e8992… |
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]FireEye FIN7 March 2017
Miller, S., et al. (2017, March 7). FIN7 Spear Phishing Campaign Targets Personnel Involved in SEC Filings. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
Open source URL - [2]Cisco DNSMessenger March 2017
Brumaghin, E. and Grady, C.. (2017, March 2). Covert Channels and Poor Decisions: The Tale of DNSMessenger. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
- [3]DNSMessenger
Based on similar descriptions of functionality, it appears S0145, as named by FireEye, is the same as the first stages of a backdoor named DNSMessenger by Cisco's Talos Intelligence Group. However, FireEye appears to break DNSMessenger into two parts: S0145 and S0146. (Citation: Cisco DNSMessenger March 2017) (Citation: FireEye FIN7 March 2017)
- [4]POWERSOURCE
(Citation: FireEye FIN7 March 2017)
- [5]mitre-attackS0145Open source URL
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