Individual skill
hunting-for-suspicious-scheduled-tasks
Hunt for adversary persistence and execution via Windows scheduled tasks by analyzing task creation events, suspicious task properties, and unusual execution patterns that indicate T1053.005 abuse.
internal/tools/skills/data/threat-hunting/hunting-for-suspicious-scheduled-tasks/SKILL.md
Source commit d42f381ad34843e71a42658e5c57290c713e85af
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- Last checked
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- License
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- cybersecurity Repository topic
- security Repository topic
- bug-bounty Repository topic
- automation Repository topic
- autonomous-pentesting Repository topic
- ai-agent Repository topic
- ai-security Repository topic
- ethical-hacking Repository topic
- golang Repository topic
- penetration-testing Repository topic
- threat-hunting Declared skill tag
- scheduled-tasks Declared skill tag
- persistence Declared skill tag
- mitre-t1053-005 Declared skill tag
- windows Declared skill tag
- endpoint-detection Declared skill tag
- security Derived category
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SKILL.mdcore · 5,712 bytes
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# Hunting for Suspicious Scheduled Tasks
## When to Use
- When proactively hunting for persistence mechanisms in Windows environments
- After detecting schtasks.exe or at.exe usage in process creation logs
- When investigating malware that survives reboots and user logoffs
- During incident response to enumerate all persistence on compromised systems
- When Windows Security Event ID 4698 (Scheduled Task Created) fires for unusual tasks
## Detection Gaps & Validation
- **Audit gap, not "no activity":** Security EID 4698/4702 only log when "Object Access > Other Object Access Events" auditing is enabled (default OFF) — absence of 4698 does NOT mean no tasks. Corroborate with Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational (EID 106/140/200) and the registry `HKLM\...\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree`.
- **Action-type evasion:** tasks whose action is a `ComHandler` CLSID, and tasks created by writing directly to `TaskCache`, bypass schtasks.exe EID 1 command-line hunting.