Local Scheduled Task Commands

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A scheduled task can be used by an adversary to establish persistence, move laterally, and/or escalate privileges.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Persistence

Version: 6 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.6.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.2

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Potential false positives

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Legitimate scheduled tasks may be created during installation of new software.

Rule query

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event.category:process and event.type:(start or process_started) and
process.name:schtasks.exe and process.args:(-change or -create or -run
or -s or /S or /change or /create or /run)

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 6 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 5 (7.10.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.9.1 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.9.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.action:"Process Create (rule: ProcessCreate)" and
    process.name:schtasks.exe and process.args:(-change or -create or -run
    or -s or /S or /change or /create or /run)
Version 2 (7.7.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.action:"Process Create (rule: ProcessCreate)" and
    process.name:schtasks.exe and process.args:("/create" or "-create" or
    "/S" or "-s" or "/run" or "-run" or "/change" or "-change")