Individual skill
hunting-for-unusual-service-installations
Detects suspicious Windows service installations (MITRE ATT&CK T1543.003) by parsing System event log Event ID 7045, analyzing service binary paths, and flagging indicators of persistence mechanisms via Sysmon/EDR telemetry. Use when hunting for new-service persistence after a suspected compromise, when Event ID 7045 fires for an unfamiliar service, or during incident response to enumerate service-based persistence on Windows hosts.
skills/hunting-for-unusual-service-installations/SKILL.md
Source commit 54a798831d2266a3ca61ce68a7acb80b81160d57
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- Skill scan complete
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- Observed behavior
- Not checked yet
- Last checked
- Nov 9, 2026
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Repository context
- Repository stars (not skill ratings)
- 35,964
- Repository last updated
- Aug 31, 2026
- License
- Apache-2.0
Observed agent integration: No specific integration evidence. Standard SKILL.md installation does not imply verified compatibility.
- ai-agents Repository topic
- claude-code Repository topic
- cybersecurity Repository topic
- incident-response Repository topic
- mitre-attack Repository topic
- penetration-testing Repository topic
- red-team Repository topic
- security Repository topic
- cloud-security Repository topic
- malware-analysis Repository topic
- threat-hunting Declared skill tag
- t1543.003 Declared skill tag
- service-installation Declared skill tag
- persistence Declared skill tag
- event-7045 Declared skill tag
- sysmon Declared skill tag
- windows-services Declared skill tag
- security Derived category
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LICENSEasset · 11,255 bytesSKILL.mdcore · 2,708 bytesreferences/api-reference.mddoc · 2,639 bytesscripts/agent.pyruns · 7,779 bytes
Read excerpt
# Hunting for Unusual Service Installations
## Overview
Attackers frequently install malicious Windows services for persistence and privilege escalation (MITRE ATT&CK T1543.003 — Create or Modify System Process: Windows Service). Event ID 7045 in the System event log records every new service installation. This skill parses .evtx log files to extract service installation events, flags suspicious binary paths (temp directories, PowerShell, cmd.exe, encoded commands), and correlates with known attack patterns.
## When to Use
- When investigating security incidents that require hunting for unusual service installations
- When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
- When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
- When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques
