Goal

Detect the creation or modification of new cron jobs on a system.

Strategy

Cron is a task scheduling system that runs tasks on a time-based schedule. Attackers can use cron jobs to gain persistence on a system, or even to run malicious code at system-boot. Cron jobs can also be used for remote code execution, or to run a process under a different user-context.

Triage and response

1. Check to see which cron task was created or modified.
2. Check whether the cron task was created or modified by a known user or process.
3. If these changes are not acceptable, roll back the host or container in question to an acceptable configuration.

Requires Agent version 7.27 or greater