Malicious GHOSTENGINE Scheduled Task Creation Masquerading as Updater via process_creation

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1053.005Scheduled Task
Persistence
- T1053.005Scheduled Task
Priv Esc
- T1053.005Scheduled Task
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of scheduled tasks using GHOSTENGINE masquerade names such as OneDriveCloudSync DefaultBrowserUpdate and OneDriveCloudBackup that run payloads as SYSTEM. These tasks impersonate legitimate update services to persist the crypto mining operation. The specific task names are strong indicators of this intrusion set.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1053.005 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious GHOSTENGINE Scheduled Task Creation Masquerading as Updater via process_creation

Pivot detection · T1053.005 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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