bear in mind, administrators debugging scheduled task entries may trigger this analytic, necessitating fine-tuning and filtering to distinguish between legitimate and potentially malicious use of 'schtasks.exe'.

Techniques

T1053

Sample rules

Schtasks Run Task On Demand

source: splunk
technicques:
- T1053

Description

The following analytic detects the execution of a Windows Scheduled Task on demand via the shell or command line. It leverages process-related data, including process name, parent process, and command-line executions, sourced from endpoint logs. The detection focuses on ‘schtasks.exe’ with an associated ‘run’ command. This activity is significant as adversaries often use it to force the execution of their created Scheduled Tasks for persistent access or lateral movement within a compromised machine. If confirmed malicious, this could allow attackers to maintain persistence or move laterally within the network, potentially leading to further compromise.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` values(Processes.process) as process values(Processes.process_id) as process_id count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime  from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process_name = "schtasks.exe" Processes.process = "*/run*" by Processes.process_name Processes.parent_process_name Processes.dest Processes.user 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `schtasks_run_task_on_demand_filter`