Scheduled Task/Job: At T1053.002
Tactics: Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may abuse the at utility to perform task scheduling for initial or recurring execution of malicious code. The at utility exists as an executable within Windows, Linux, and macOS for scheduling tasks at a specified time and date. Although deprecated in favor of Scheduled Task's schtasks in Windows environments, using at requires that the Task Scheduler service be running, and the user to be logged on as a member of the local Administrators group. In addition to explicitly running the `at` command, adversaries may also schedule a task with at by directly leveraging the Windows Management Instrumentation `Win32_ScheduledJob` WMI class.
Events covered
7 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | Event ID 12 | RegistryEvent (Object create and delete) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 14 | RegistryEvent (Key and Value Rename) |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 5145 | A network share object was checked to see whether client can be granted desired access. |
| Sysmon-for-Linux | Event ID 1 | Process Create |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 18 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (30 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (300 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Exclusions (72 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 8 rules
- Interactive AT Job
- MITRE BZAR Indicators for Execution
- Remote Schedule Task Lateral Movement via ATSvc
- Remote Schedule Task Lateral Movement via ITaskSchedulerService
- Remote Schedule Task Lateral Movement via SASec
- Remote Task Creation via ATSVC Named Pipe
- Remote Task Creation via ATSVC Named Pipe - Zeek
- Scheduled Task/Job At
Elastic 6 rules
- At Job Created or Modified
- At.exe Command Lateral Movement
- Modification of Persistence Relevant Files Detected via Defend for Containers
- Pod or Container Creation with Suspicious Command-Line
- Potential Persistence via File Modification
- Scheduled Tasks AT Command Enabled