Techniques
Sample rules
Windows Scheduled Task with Highest Privileges
- source: splunk
- technicques:
- T1053
- T1053.005
Description
The following analytic detects the creation of a new task with the highest execution privilege via Schtasks.exe. This tactic is often observed in AsyncRAT attacks, where the scheduled task is used for persistence and privilege escalation. AsyncRAT sets up a scheduled task with parameters ‘/rl’ and ‘highest’, triggering this technique. It’s a strong indicator of potential malware or adversaries seeking to establish persistence and escalate privileges through scheduled tasks. This is crucial for a Security Operations Center (SOC) as it can prevent unauthorized system access and potential data breaches. The analytic works by monitoring logs for process name, parent process, and command-line executions. In the presence of the ‘*/rl ’ and ’ highest *’ commands in a schtasks.exe process, an alert is triggered.
Detection logic
| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process_name = "schtasks.exe" Processes.process = "*/rl *" Processes.process = "* highest *" by Processes.process_name Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process Processes.process Processes.process_guid Processes.dest Processes.user
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `windows_scheduled_task_with_highest_privileges_filter`