Individual skill

detecting-malicious-scheduled-tasks-with-sysmon

Detect malicious scheduled task creation and modification using Sysmon Event IDs 1 (Process Create for schtasks.exe), 11 (File Create for task XML), and Windows Security Event 4698/4702. The analyst correlates task creation with suspicious parent processes, public directory paths, and encoded command arguments to identify persistence and lateral movement via scheduled tasks. Activates for requests involving scheduled task detection, Sysmon persistence hunting, or T1053.005 Scheduled Task/Job analysis.

internal/tools/skills/data/threat-hunting/detecting-malicious-scheduled-tasks-with-sysmon/SKILL.md

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Last checked
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Nov 8, 2026
License
Apache-2.0

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# Detecting Malicious Scheduled Tasks with Sysmon

## Overview

Adversaries abuse Windows Task Scheduler (schtasks.exe, at.exe) for persistence (T1053.005)
and lateral movement. Sysmon Event ID 1 captures schtasks.exe process creation with full
command-line arguments, while Event ID 11 captures task XML files written to
C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\. Windows Security Event 4698 logs task registration details.
This skill covers building detection rules that correlate these events to identify
malicious scheduled tasks created from suspicious paths, with encoded payloads, or
targeting remote systems.


## When to Use
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