TaskHound: Tool for Detecting Privileged Windows Scheduled Tasks and Stored Credentials

Windows scheduled tasks are a goldmine for attackers seeking lateral movement and privilege escalation opportunities.

Organizations frequently mismanage these tasks, often configuring them to run with elevated privileges while inadvertently storing credentials on disk.

TaskHound is a sophisticated reconnaissance tool designed to identify and exploit these misconfigurations at scale.

The Problem TaskHound Solves

During post-exploitation assessments, security teams need to identify high-value attack paths

within Active Directory environments.

Scheduled tasks running with privileged accounts present an ideal target for credential theft and lateral movement.

However, manually discovering these tasks across multiple systems is time-consuming and error-prone.

TaskHound automates this critical reconnaissance phase by enumerating scheduled tasks over SMB and parsing their XML configurations to identify security-sensitive tasks that attackers can leverage.

TaskHound distinguishes itself through several powerful features. Its Tier 0 detection automatically identifies tasks running as Domain Admins, Enterprise Admins, Schema Admins, and other critical administrative groups.

This capability directly aligns with adversary priorities, compromising a task running as a Domain Admin grants immediate access to forest-wide administrative privileges.

The tool’s BloodHound integration significantly enhances its capabilities. TaskHound supports both Legacy BloodHound and BloodHound Community Edition formats, automatically detecting which format is in use.

This integration enables context-aware analysis by correlating scheduled task findings with BloodHound’s attack path data.

Users can quickly determine whether a compromised task leads to domain compromise or serves as a stepping stone in a larger attack chain.

Password analysis represents another critical feature. TaskHound compares password change dates with task creation dates to identify stale credentials stored in task credentials that may no longer reflect current account passwords, making them viable targets for DPAPI credential-decryption attacks.

The tool operates in both online and offline modes. In online mode, SMB is used to enumerate tasks directly on target systems, requiring valid credentials or Kerberos authentication.

Offline mode processes previously collected XML files, enabling analysis without live network access—a crucial OPSEC consideration for red teamers.

For defensive operations, TaskHound identifies tasks immediately worth investigating: those marked as Tier 0, those with password analysis indicating DPAPI dump feasibility, and those matching high-value BloodHound entities.

TaskHound transforms scheduled task enumeration from a manual process into an automated intelligence gathering operation.

For defenders, this reinforces the importance of proper privileged access management, particularly avoiding credential storage in scheduled tasks altogether.

For authorized security researchers, TaskHound provides invaluable insight into the Active Directory attack surface that is often overlooked during assessments.

The tool represents a maturation of Windows post-exploitation techniques, emphasizing the ongoing necessity for comprehensive privilege access governance and regular Active Directory auditing.

Find this Story Interesting! Follow us on Google News, LinkedIn and X to Get More Instant Updates

The post TaskHound: Tool for Detecting Privileged Windows Scheduled Tasks and Stored Credentials appeared first on Cyber Security News.