Rare Scheduled Task RPC activity from a rarely seen host

Synopsis

Field	Value
Activation Period	14 Days
Training Period	30 Days
Test Period	N/A (single event)
Deduplication Period	1 Day
Required Data	Requires one of the following data sources: Palo Alto Networks Firewall EAL Logs OR XDR Agent with eXtended Threat Hunting (XTH)
Detector Tags	NDR Lateral Movement Analytics, NDR Unmanaged Subnet Analytics
ATT&CK Tactic	Lateral Movement (TA0008), Persistence (TA0003)
ATT&CK Technique	Remote Services (T1021), Scheduled Task/Job (T1053)
Severity	Low

Description

The endpoint performed abnormal Scheduled Task RPC activity to a remote host.

Attacker's Goals

• Attackers may attempt to gain persistence or move laterally over the network by executing code on remote hosts using scheduled tasks.
• The ITaskSchedulerService RPC interface is used to create and manage scheduled tasks on a local or remote host.

Investigative actions

• Review the action of the created scheduled task on the remote host.
• Correlate the RPC call from the source host and understand which software initiated it.
• Verify that this isn't IT activity.