Suspicious Scheduled Task Creation Spawned by Microsoft Office

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 a Microsoft Office application spawning schtasks to register a scheduled task which mirrors the Cobalt Kitty initial access chain described by WithSecure where a malicious Word document created a persistence task. An Office document launching schtasks is highly abnormal and typically indicates macro driven persistence or execution following a phishing lure.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Scheduled Task Creation Spawned by Microsoft Office

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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