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Description

The following hunting analytic aims to identify suspicious tasks that have been registered and executed in Windows using EventID 200 (action run) and 201 (action completed) from the Windows Task Scheduler logs. This analytic helps detect evasive techniques used to register tasks on Windows systems. It is recommended to filter the results based on the ActionName field by specifying specific paths that are not commonly used in your environment.
After implementing this analytic, it is important to review parallel events related to the scheduled tasks. EventID 106 will be generated when a new task is created, but it does not necessarily mean that the task has been executed. Analysts should capture any files on disk associated with the task and perform further analysis.
To implement this analytic, Task Scheduler logs must be collected. This can be done by adding a stanza for [WinEventLog://Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational] in the inputs.conf file and setting renderXml=false. It is worth noting that not translating the logs into XML may require specific extraction of items from the Message field.
False positives are expected with this analytic, so it is important to filter the results based on the paths or specific keywords of interest in the ActionName field to reduce noise.
Identifying and analyzing scheduled tasks that have been executed is crucial for a Security Operations Center (SOC) as it helps detect potentially malicious or unauthorized activities on Windows systems. By capturing and investigating the associated events, analysts can uncover signs of persistence mechanisms, unauthorized code execution, or suspicious behaviors. The impact of a true positive could range from unauthorized access to data exfiltration or the execution of malicious payloads.

  • Type: Hunting

  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud

  • Last Updated: 2023-04-05
  • Author: Michael Haag, Splunk
  • ID: b3632472-310b-11ec-9aab-acde48001122

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1053.005 Scheduled Task Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation
Kill Chain Phase
  • Installation
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • DE.AE
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


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`wineventlog_task_scheduler` EventCode IN ("200","201") 
| rename ComputerName as dest 
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by Message dest EventCode category 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `winevent_windows_task_scheduler_event_action_started_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: winevent_windows_task_scheduler_event_action_started_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Required fields

List of fields required to use this analytic.

  • _time
  • TaskName
  • ActionName
  • EventID
  • dest
  • ProcessID

How To Implement

Task Scheduler logs are required to be collected. Enable logging with inputs.conf by adding a stanza for [WinEventLog://Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational] and renderXml=false. Note, not translating it in XML may require a proper extraction of specific items in the Message.

Known False Positives

False positives will be present. Filter based on ActionName paths or specify keywords of interest.

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
80.0 80 100 A Scheduled Task was scheduled and ran on $dest$.

:information_source: The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

Reference

Test Dataset

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

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