Creation or Modification of a new GPO Scheduled Task or Service

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Detects the creation or modification of a new Group Policy based scheduled task or service. These methods are used for legitimate system administration, but can also be abused by an attacker with domain admin permissions to execute a malicious payload remotely on all or a subset of the domain joined machines.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-9m (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/common-options.html#date-math[Date Math format], see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References: None

Tags:

• Elastic
• Host
• Windows
• Threat Detection
• Persistence

Version: 6

Rule authors:

• Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

file where event.type != "deletion" and
  file.path : ("?:\\Windows\\SYSVOL\\domain\\Policies\\*\\MACHINE\\Preferences\\ScheduledTasks\\ScheduledTasks.xml",
               "?:\\Windows\\SYSVOL\\domain\\Policies\\*\\MACHINE\\Preferences\\Preferences\\Services\\Services.xml") and
  not process.name : "dfsrs.exe"

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

• 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/

• Sub-technique:

  • Name: Scheduled Task
  • ID: T1053.005
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1053/005/