Persistence via Scheduled Job Creation

A job can be used to schedule programs or scripts to be executed at a specified date and time. Adversaries may abuse task scheduling functionality to facilitate initial or recurring execution of malicious code.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

winlogbeat-*
logs-endpoint.events.*
logs-windows.*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Persistence

Version: 2 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.13.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.16.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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Legitimate scheduled jobs may be created during installation of new software.

Rule query

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file where event.type != "deletion" and file.path :
"?:\\Windows\\Tasks\\*" and file.extension : "job"

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Persistence
- ID: TA0003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/
Technique:
- Name: Scheduled Task/Job
- ID: T1053
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1053/

Rule version history

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Version 2 (7.16.0 release)

Formatting only

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