Suspicious Scheduled Task Persistence Referencing AppData Roaming

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-05-05
Updated
2026-08-28

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 schtasks.exe creating a task whose action points to an executable staged under the user AppData Roaming directory, the persistence pattern used by TrickBot after copying itself into that location. Malware favors AppData Roaming because it is user writable and survives across sessions. Scheduled tasks launching binaries from a roaming profile path are uncommon for legitimate software.

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Suspicious Scheduled Task Persistence Referencing AppData Roaming
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.