Set preferences for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux

Applies to:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 1
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2
• Microsoft 365 Defender

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Important

This topic contains instructions for how to set preferences for Defender for Endpoint on Linux in enterprise environments. If you are interested in configuring the product on a device from the command-line, see Resources.

In enterprise environments, Defender for Endpoint on Linux can be managed through a configuration profile. This profile is deployed from the management tool of your choice. Preferences managed by the enterprise take precedence over the ones set locally on the device. In other words, users in your enterprise aren't able to change preferences that are set through this configuration profile. If exclusions were added through the managed configuration profile, they can only be removed through the managed configuration profile. The command line works for exclusions that were added locally.

This article describes the structure of this profile (including a recommended profile that you can use to get started) and instructions on how to deploy the profile.

Configuration profile structure

The configuration profile is a .json file that consists of entries identified by a key (which denotes the name of the preference), followed by a value, which depends on the nature of the preference. Values can be simple, such as a numerical value, or complex, such as a nested list of preferences.

Typically, you would use a configuration management tool to push a file with the name mdatp_managed.json at the location /etc/opt/microsoft/mdatp/managed/.

The top level of the configuration profile includes product-wide preferences and entries for subareas of the product, which are explained in more detail in the next sections.

Antivirus engine preferences

The antivirusEngine section of the configuration profile is used to manage the preferences of the antivirus component of the product.

Description	Value
Key	antivirusEngine
Data type	Dictionary (nested preference)
Comments	See the following sections for a description of the dictionary contents.

Enforcement level for antivirus engine

Specifies the enforcement preference of antivirus engine. There are three values for setting enforcement level:

• Real-time (real_time): Real-time protection (scan files as they're modified) is enabled.
• On-demand (on_demand): Files are scanned only on demand. In this:
  • Real-time protection is turned off.
• Passive (passive): Runs the antivirus engine in passive mode. In this:
  • Real-time protection is turned off: Threats are not remediated by Microsoft Defender Antivirus.
  • On-demand scanning is turned on: Still use the scan capabilities on the endpoint.
  • Automatic threat remediation is turned off: No files will be moved and security admin is expected to take required action.
  • Security intelligence updates are turned on: Alerts will be available on security admins tenant.

Description	Value
Key	enforcementLevel
Data type	String
Possible values	real_time on_demand passive (default)
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.10.72 or higher. Default is changed from real_time to passive for Endpoint version 101.23062.0001 or higher.

Enable/disable behavior-monitoring

Determines whether behavior monitoring and blocking capability is enabled on the device or not.

---

Description	Value
Key	behaviorMonitoring
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.45.00 or higher.

Run a scan after definitions are updated

Specifies whether to start a process scan after new security intelligence updates are downloaded on the device. Enabling this setting triggers an antivirus scan on the running processes of the device.

Description	Value
Key	scanAfterDefinitionUpdate
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	true (default) false
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.45.00 or higher.

Scan archives (on-demand antivirus scans only)

Specifies whether to scan archives during on-demand antivirus scans.

Note

Archive files are never scanned during real time protection. When the files in an archive are extracted, they are scanned. The scanArchives option can be used to force the scan of archives only during on-demand scan.

Description	Value
Key	scanArchives
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	true (default) false
Comments	Available in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint version 101.45.00 or higher.

Degree of parallelism for on-demand scans

Specifies the degree of parallelism for on-demand scans. This corresponds to the number of threads used to perform the scan and impacts the CPU usage, and the duration of the on-demand scan.

Description	Value
Key	maximumOnDemandScanThreads
Data type	Integer
Possible values	2 (default). Allowed values are integers between 1 and 64.
Comments	Available in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint version 101.45.00 or higher.

Exclusion merge policy

Specifies the merge policy for exclusions. It can be a combination of administrator-defined and user-defined exclusions (merge) or only administrator-defined exclusions (admin_only). This setting can be used to restrict local users from defining their own exclusions.

Description	Value
Key	exclusionsMergePolicy
Data type	String
Possible values	merge (default) admin_only
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 100.83.73 or higher.

Scan exclusions

Entities that have been excluded from the scan. Exclusions can be specified by full paths, extensions, or file names. (Exclusions are specified as an array of items, administrator can specify as many elements as necessary, in any order.)

Description	Value
Key	exclusions
Data type	Dictionary (nested preference)
Comments	See the following sections for a description of the dictionary contents.

Type of exclusion

Specifies the type of content excluded from the scan.

Description	Value
Key	$type
Data type	String
Possible values	excludedPath excludedFileExtension excludedFileName

Path to excluded content

Used to exclude content from the scan by full file path.

Description	Value
Key	path
Data type	String
Possible values	valid paths
Comments	Applicable only if $type is excludedPath

Path type (file / directory)

Indicates if the path property refers to a file or directory.

Description	Value
Key	isDirectory
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	false (default) true
Comments	Applicable only if $type is excludedPath

File extension excluded from the scan

Used to exclude content from the scan by file extension.

Description	Value
Key	extension
Data type	String
Possible values	valid file extensions
Comments	Applicable only if $type is excludedFileExtension

Process excluded from the scan*

Specifies a process for which all file activity is excluded from scanning. The process can be specified either by its name (for example, cat) or full path (for example, /bin/cat).

Description	Value
Key	name
Data type	String
Possible values	any string
Comments	Applicable only if $type is excludedFileName

Muting Non Exec mounts

Specifies the behavior of RTP on mount point marked as noexec. There are two values for setting are:

• Unmuted (unmute): The default value, all mount points are scanned as part of RTP.
• Muted (mute): Mount points marked as noexec aren't scanned as part of RTP, these mount point can be created for:
  • Database files on Database servers for keeping data base files.
  • File server can keep data files mountpoints with noexec option.
  • Back up can keep data files mountpoints with noexec option.

Description	Value
Key	nonExecMountPolicy
Data type	String
Possible values	unmute (default) mute
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.85.27 or higher.

Unmonitor Filesystems

Configure filesystems to be unmonitored/excluded from Real Time Protection(RTP). The filesystems configured are validated against Microsoft Defender's list of permitted filesystems. Only post successful validation, will the filesystem be allowed to be unmonitored. These configured unmonitored filesystems will still be scanned by Quick, Full, and custom scans.

By default, NFS and Fuse are unmonitored from RTP, Quick, and Full scans. However, they can still be scanned by a custom scan.

Description	Value
Key	unmonitoredFilesystems
Data type	Array of strings
Comments	Configured filesystem will be unmonitored only if it is present in Microsoft's list of permitted unmonitored filesystems.

Configure file hash computation feature

Enables or disables file hash computation feature. When this feature is enabled, Defender for Endpoint computes hashes for files it scans. Note that enabling this feature might impact device performance. For more details, please refer to: Create indicators for files.

Description	Value
Key	enableFileHashComputation
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	false (default) true
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.85.27 or higher.

Allowed threats

List of threats (identified by their name) that aren't blocked by the product and are instead allowed to run.

Description	Value
Key	allowedThreats
Data type	Array of strings

Disallowed threat actions

Restricts the actions that the local user of a device can take when threats are detected. The actions included in this list aren't displayed in the user interface.

Description	Value
Key	disallowedThreatActions
Data type	Array of strings
Possible values	allow (restricts users from allowing threats) restore (restricts users from restoring threats from the quarantine)
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 100.83.73 or higher.

Threat type settings

The threatTypeSettings preference in the antivirus engine is used to control how certain threat types are handled by the product.

Description	Value
Key	threatTypeSettings
Data type	Dictionary (nested preference)
Comments	See the following sections for a description of the dictionary contents.

Threat type

Type of threat for which the behavior is configured.

Description	Value
Key	key
Data type	String
Possible values	potentially_unwanted_application archive_bomb

Action to take

Action to take when coming across a threat of the type specified in the preceding section. Can be:

• Audit: The device isn't protected against this type of threat, but an entry about the threat is logged.
• Block: The device is protected against this type of threat and you're notified in the security console.
• Off: The device isn't protected against this type of threat and nothing is logged.

Description	Value
Key	value
Data type	String
Possible values	audit (default) block off

Threat type settings merge policy

Specifies the merge policy for threat type settings. This can be a combination of administrator-defined and user-defined settings (merge) or only administrator-defined settings (admin_only). This setting can be used to restrict local users from defining their own settings for different threat types.

Description	Value
Key	threatTypeSettingsMergePolicy
Data type	String
Possible values	merge (default) admin_only
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 100.83.73 or higher.

Antivirus scan history retention (in days)

Specify the number of days that results are retained in the scan history on the device. Old scan results are removed from the history. Old quarantined files that are also removed from the disk.

Description	Value
Key	scanResultsRetentionDays
Data type	String
Possible values	90 (default). Allowed values are from 1 day to 180 days.
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.04.76 or higher.

Maximum number of items in the antivirus scan history

Specify the maximum number of entries to keep in the scan history. Entries include all on-demand scans performed in the past and all antivirus detections.

Description	Value
Key	scanHistoryMaximumItems
Data type	String
Possible values	10000 (default). Allowed values are from 5000 items to 15000 items.
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.04.76 or higher.

Advanced scan options

The following settings can be configured to enable certain advanced scanning features.

Note

Enabling these features might impact device performance. As such, it is recommended to keep the defaults.

Configure scanning of file modify permissions events

When this feature is enabled, Defender for Endpoint will scan files when their permissions have been changed to set the execute bit(s).

Note

This feature is applicable only when the enableFilePermissionEvents feature is enabled. For more information, see Advanced optional features section below for details.

Description	Value
Key	scanFileModifyPermissions
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	false (default) true
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Configure scanning of file modify ownership events

When this feature is enabled, Defender for Endpoint will scan files for which ownership has changed.

Note

This feature is applicable only when the enableFileOwnershipEvents feature is enabled. For more information, see Advanced optional features section below for details.

Description	Value
Key	scanFileModifyOwnership
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	false (default) true
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Configure scanning of raw socket events

When this feature is enabled, Defender for Endpoint will scan network socket events such as creation of raw sockets / packet sockets, or setting socket option.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Note

This feature is applicable only when the enableRawSocketEvent feature is enabled. For more information, see Advanced optional features section below for details.

Description	Value
Key	scanNetworkSocketEvent
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	false (default) true
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Cloud-delivered protection preferences

The cloudService entry in the configuration profile is used to configure the cloud-driven protection feature of the product.

Description	Value
Key	cloudService
Data type	Dictionary (nested preference)
Comments	See the following sections for a description of the dictionary contents.

Enable / disable cloud delivered protection

Determines whether cloud-delivered protection is enabled on the device or not. To improve the security of your services, we recommend keeping this feature turned on.

Description	Value
Key	enabled
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	true (default) false

Diagnostic collection level

Diagnostic data is used to keep Defender for Endpoint secure and up to date, detect, diagnose and fix problems, and also make product improvements. This setting determines the level of diagnostics sent by the product to Microsoft.

Description	Value
Key	diagnosticLevel
Data type	String
Possible values	optional required (default)

Configure cloud block level

This setting determines how aggressive Defender for Endpoint is in blocking and scanning suspicious files. If this setting is on, Defender for Endpoint is more aggressive when identifying suspicious files to block and scan; otherwise, it is less aggressive and therefore blocks and scans with less frequency.

There are five values for setting cloud block level:

• Normal (normal): The default blocking level.
• Moderate (moderate): Delivers verdict only for high confidence detections.
• High (high): Aggressively blocks unknown files while optimizing for performance (greater chance of blocking non-harmful files).
• High Plus (high_plus): Aggressively blocks unknown files and applies additional protection measures (might impact client device performance).
• Zero Tolerance (zero_tolerance): Blocks all unknown programs.

Description	Value
Key	cloudBlockLevel
Data type	String
Possible values	normal (default) moderate high high_plus zero_tolerance
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.56.62 or higher.

Enable / disable automatic sample submissions

Determines whether suspicious samples (that are likely to contain threats) are sent to Microsoft. There are three levels for controlling sample submission:

• None: no suspicious samples are submitted to Microsoft.
• Safe: only suspicious samples that don't contain personally identifiable information (PII) are submitted automatically. This is the default value for this setting.
• All: all suspicious samples are submitted to Microsoft.

Description	Value
Key	automaticSampleSubmissionConsent
Data type	String
Possible values	none safe (default) all

Enable / disable automatic security intelligence updates

Determines whether security intelligence updates are installed automatically:

Description	Value
Key	automaticDefinitionUpdateEnabled
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	true (default) false

Advanced optional features

The following settings can be configured to enable certain advanced features.

Note

Enabling these features might impact device performance. It is recommended to keep the defaults.

Description	Value
Key	features
Data type	Dictionary (nested preference)
Comments	See the following sections for a description of the dictionary contents.

Module load feature

Determines whether module load events (file open events on shared libraries) are monitored.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Description	Value
Key	moduleLoad
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.68.80 or higher.

Supplementary sensor configurations

The following settings can be used to configure certain advanced supplementary sensor features.

Description	Value
Key	supplementarySensorConfigurations
Data type	Dictionary (nested preference)
Comments	See the following sections for a description of the dictionary contents.

Configure monitoring of file modify permissions events

Determines whether file modify permissions events (chmod) are monitored.

Note

When this feature is enabled, Defender for Endpoint will monitor changes to the execute bits of files, but not scan these events. For more information, see Advanced scanning features section for more details.

Description	Value
Key	enableFilePermissionEvents
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Configure monitoring of file modify ownership events

Determines whether file modify ownership events (chown) are monitored.

Note

When this feature is enabled, Defender for Endpoint will monitor changes to the ownership of files, but not scan these events. For more information, see Advanced scanning features section for more details.

Description	Value
Key	enableFileOwnershipEvents
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Configure monitoring of raw socket events

Determines whether network socket events involving creation of raw sockets / packet sockets, or setting socket option, are monitored.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Note

When this feature is enabled, Defender for Endpoint will monitor these network socket events, but not scan these events. For more information, see Advanced scanning features section above for more details.

Description	Value
Key	enableRawSocketEvent
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Configure monitoring of boot loader events

Determines whether boot loader events are monitored and scanned.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Description	Value
Key	enableBootLoaderCalls
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.68.80 or higher.

Configure monitoring of ptrace events

Determines whether ptrace events are monitored and scanned.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Description	Value
Key	enableProcessCalls
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.68.80 or higher.

Configure monitoring of pseudofs events

Determines whether pseudofs events are monitored and scanned.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Description	Value
Key	enablePseudofsCalls
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.68.80 or higher.

Configure monitoring of module load events using eBPF

Determines whether module load events are monitored using eBPF and scanned.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Description	Value
Key	enableEbpfModuleLoadEvents
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.68.80 or higher.

Report AV Suspicious Events to EDR

Determines whether suspicious events from Antivirus are reported to EDR.

Description	Value
Key	sendLowfiEvents
Data type	String
Possible values	disabled (default) enabled
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Network protection configurations

The following settings can be used to configure advanced Network Protection inspection features to control what traffic gets inspected by Network Protection.

Note

For these to be effective, Network Protection has to be turned on. For more information, see Turn on network protection for Linux.

Description	Value
Key	networkProtection
Data type	Dictionary (nested preference)
Comments	See the following sections for a description of the dictionary contents.

Configure ICMP inspection

Determines whether ICMP events are monitored and scanned.

Note

This feature is applicable only when Behavior Monitoring is enabled.

Description	Value
Key	disableIcmpInspection
Data type	Boolean
Possible values	true (default) false
Comments	Available in Defender for Endpoint version 101.23062.0010 or higher.

Recommended configuration profile

To get started, we recommend the following configuration profile for your enterprise to take advantage of all protection features that Defender for Endpoint provides.

The following configuration profile will:

• Enable real-time protection (RTP)
• Specify how the following threat types are handled:
  • Potentially unwanted applications (PUA) are blocked
  • Archive bombs (file with a high compression rate) are audited to the product logs
• Enable automatic security intelligence updates
• Enable cloud-delivered protection
• Enable automatic sample submission at safe level

Sample profile

{
   "antivirusEngine":{
      "enforcementLevel":"real_time",
      "threatTypeSettings":[
         {
            "key":"potentially_unwanted_application",
            "value":"block"
         },
         {
            "key":"archive_bomb",
            "value":"audit"
         }
      ]
   },
   "cloudService":{
      "automaticDefinitionUpdateEnabled":true,
      "automaticSampleSubmissionConsent":"safe",
      "enabled":true,
      "proxy": "<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE> http://proxy.server:port/"
   }
}

Full configuration profile example

The following configuration profile contains entries for all settings described in this document and can be used for more advanced scenarios where you want more control over the product.

Note

It is not possible to control all Microsoft Defender for Endpoint communication with only a proxy setting in this JSON.

Full profile

{
   "antivirusEngine":{
      "enforcementLevel":"passive",
      "scanAfterDefinitionUpdate":true,
      "scanArchives":true,
      "maximumOnDemandScanThreads":2,
      "exclusionsMergePolicy":"merge",
      "exclusions":[
         {
            "$type":"excludedPath",
            "isDirectory":false,
            "path":"/var/log/system.log<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE>"
         },
         {
            "$type":"excludedPath",
            "isDirectory":true,
            "path":"/run<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE>"
         },
         {
            "$type":"excludedPath",
            "isDirectory":true,
            "path":"/home/*/git<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE>"
         },
         {
            "$type":"excludedFileExtension",
            "extension":".pdf<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE>"
         },
         {
            "$type":"excludedFileName",
            "name":"cat<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE>"
         }
      ],
      "allowedThreats":[
         "<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE>EICAR-Test-File (not a virus)"
      ],
      "disallowedThreatActions":[
         "allow",
         "restore"
      ],
      "nonExecMountPolicy":"unmute",
      "unmonitoredFilesystems": ["nfs,fuse"],
      "threatTypeSettingsMergePolicy":"merge",
      "threatTypeSettings":[
         {
            "key":"potentially_unwanted_application",
            "value":"block"
         },
         {
            "key":"archive_bomb",
            "value":"audit"
         }
      ]
   },
   "cloudService":{
      "enabled":true,
      "diagnosticLevel":"optional",
      "automaticSampleSubmissionConsent":"safe",
      "automaticDefinitionUpdateEnabled":true,
      "proxy": "<EXAMPLE DO NOT USE> http://proxy.server:port/"
   }
}

Add tag or group ID to the configuration profile

When you run the mdatp health command for the first time, the value for the tag and group ID will be blank. To add tag or group ID to the mdatp_managed.json file, follow the below steps:

1. Open the configuration profile from the path /etc/opt/microsoft/mdatp/managed/mdatp_managed.json.
2. Go down to the bottom of the file, where the cloudService block is located.
3. Add the required tag or group ID as following example at the end of the closing curly bracket for the cloudService.

  },
  "cloudService": {
    "enabled": true,
    "diagnosticLevel": "optional",
    "automaticSampleSubmissionConsent": "safe",
    "automaticDefinitionUpdateEnabled": true,
    "proxy": "http://proxy.server:port/"
},
"edr": {
  "groupIds":"GroupIdExample",
  "tags": [
            {
            "key": "GROUP",
            "value": "Tag"
            }
          ]
      }
}

Note

Add the comma after the closing curly bracket at the end of the cloudService block. Also, make sure that there are two closing curly brackets after adding Tag or Group ID block (please see the above example). At the moment, the only supported key name for tags is GROUP.

Configuration profile validation

The configuration profile must be a valid JSON-formatted file. There are many tools that can be used to verify this. For example, if you have python installed on your device:

python -m json.tool mdatp_managed.json

If the JSON is well-formed, the above command outputs it back to the Terminal and returns an exit code of 0. Otherwise, an error that describes the issue is displayed and the command returns an exit code of 1.

Verifying that the mdatp_managed.json file is working as expected

To verify that your /etc/opt/microsoft/mdatp/managed/mdatp_managed.json is working properly, you should see "[managed]" next to these settings:

• cloud_enabled
• cloud_automatic_sample_submission_consent
• passive_mode_enabled
• real_time_protection_enabled
• automatic_definition_update_enabled

Note

No restart of mdatp daemon is required for changes to most configurations in mdatp_managed.json to take effect. Exception: The following configurations require a daemon restart to take effect:

• cloud-diagnostic
• log-rotation-parameters

Configuration profile deployment

Once you've built the configuration profile for your enterprise, you can deploy it through the management tool that your enterprise is using. Defender for Endpoint on Linux reads the managed configuration from the /etc/opt/microsoft/mdatp/managed/mdatp_managed.json file.

Tip

Do you want to learn more? Engage with the Microsoft Security community in our Tech Community: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Tech Community.