Hunting for Persistence Mechanisms in Windows

When to Use

• During periodic proactive threat hunts for dormant backdoors
• After an incident to identify all persistence mechanisms an attacker planted
• When investigating unusual services, scheduled tasks, or startup entries
• When threat intel reports describe new persistence techniques in the wild
• During security posture assessments to identify unauthorized persistent software

Prerequisites

• Sysmon deployed with Event IDs 12/13/14 (Registry), 19/20/21 (WMI), 1 (Process Creation)
• Windows Security Event forwarding for 4697 (Service Install), 4698 (Scheduled Task)
• EDR with registry and file monitoring capabilities
• PowerShell script block logging enabled (Event ID 4104)
• Autoruns or equivalent baseline of legitimate persistent entries

Workflow