Suspicious Scheduled Task Creation for Kong RAT Persistence

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-22
Updated
2026-09-22

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Priv Esc
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Defense Evasion

  5. Cred Access

  6. Discovery

  7. Lateral Movement

  8. Collection

  9. C2

  10. Exfiltration

  11. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of a scheduled task whose name begins with SimpleActivityScheduleTimer, a fixed prefix used by the Kong RAT for persistence in the SEO poisoning campaign. The randomized GUID suffix varies while the descriptive prefix remains constant. Scheduled tasks matching this naming scheme reestablish the implant across reboots.

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Suspicious Per-Minute Scheduled Task Creation via schtasks for GOVERSHELL Persistence
Suspicious Scheduled Task Running WScript With JScript Engine
Suspicious SUNBURST EventCacheManager Scheduled Task Artifact (via process_creation)
Suspicious Scheduled Task Creation Running VBS at One Minute Interval via Blind Eagle (via process_creation)
Suspicious Scheduled Task Creation for Kong RAT Persistence
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.