Suspicious Image Load (taskschd.dll) from MS Office
editSuspicious Image Load (taskschd.dll) from MS Office
editIdentifies a suspicious image load (taskschd.dll) from Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate adversarial activity where a scheduled task is configured via Windows Component Object Model (COM). This technique can be used to configure persistence and evade monitoring by avoiding the usage of the traditional Windows binary (schtasks.exe) used to manage scheduled tasks.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- winlogbeat-*
- logs-endpoint.events.*
- logs-windows.*
Severity: low
Risk score: 21
Runs every: 5 minutes
Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)
Maximum alerts per execution: 100
References:
Tags:
- Elastic
- Host
- Windows
- Threat Detection
- Persistence
Version: 3 (version history)
Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0
Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0
Rule authors: Elastic
Rule license: Elastic License v2
Rule query
editlibrary where process.name : ("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE",
"POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE", "MSACCESS.EXE") and event.action :
"load" and event.category : "library" and dll.name :
"taskschd.dll"
Threat mapping
editFramework: 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/
Rule version history
edit- Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
library where process.name in ("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE", "POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE", "MSACCESS.EXE") and event.action == "load" and event.category == "library" and file.name == "taskschd.dll"
-
- Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
-
- Formatting only