S0057: Tasklist
Analyst context for executives and security teams
Tasklist matters because it is a normal Windows command-line utility that can quickly reveal running applications, services, and process IDs on a local or remote computer. For defenders, the risk is not the tool itself but the context: ATT&CK links it to discovery behaviors for processes, services, and security software, and to multiple campaigns and groups. Security leaders should treat suspicious Tasklist use as a potential early signal of hands-on-keyboard reconnaissance, tool staging, or preparation for follow-on actions.
Executive priority
Prioritize visibility and response playbooks for legitimate administrative tools, not only malware. Tasklist is built into Windows, so blocking it outright may not be practical; the business decision is whether SOC teams can distinguish routine administration from unusual discovery activity. This is especially relevant for incident triage, audit evidence around endpoint logging, and operational resilience in environments where discovery of services or security tools could precede disruption, ransomware activity, or movement toward sensitive systems.
Technical view
Validate command-line and process telemetry for tasklist.exe, including parent process, user context, host role, remote execution indicators, command arguments such as service-oriented usage, and temporal clustering with other discovery commands. Map review to the related ATT&CK techniques: System Service Discovery T1007, Process Discovery T1057, and Security Software Discovery T1518.001. Because ATT&CK provides no official detection text for S0057, detection engineering should be behavior-based and environment-tuned rather than based on the binary name alone.
Likely telemetry
- Endpoint process creation events for tasklist.exe
- Full command-line arguments
- Parent and child process relationships
- User, logon session, and privilege context
- Host identity, asset role, and endpoint security sensor status
Detection direction
- Baseline legitimate administrative and helpdesk use of Tasklist before alerting on the command alone.
- Prioritize unusual parent processes, non-administrative users, execution from suspicious scripts, or use on sensitive servers.
- Correlate Tasklist activity with other discovery behaviors tied to T1007, T1057, and T1518.001.
- Treat discovery of security tools or services as higher priority when followed by credential access, lateral movement, or defense evasion indicators.
- Account for false positives from administrators, troubleshooting scripts, monitoring tools, and software inventory workflows.
Mitigation priorities
- Ensure endpoint logging captures process creation and command-line detail for built-in Windows utilities.
- Limit unnecessary administrative privileges and remote administration access that could make discovery more useful to an intruder.
- Harden and monitor management pathways used to run commands on remote systems.
- Document approved administrative use cases so SOC teams can suppress known-good patterns without losing suspicious activity.
- Include legitimate-tool discovery in incident response playbooks and tabletop exercises.
Analyst notes and limits
ATT&CK identifies Tasklist as a Windows-packaged command-line utility and relates it to discovery techniques for services, processes, and security software. The relationship set includes multiple campaigns and groups, including espionage, ransomware, and critical-infrastructure-related contexts, which supports prioritizing detection context but not attribution. The strongest defensive value is in correlation, baselining, and response triage around legitimate-tool use.
The supplied ATT&CK object has no official detection guidance, no explicit platform field value, and no tactics listed directly on the tool. Windows relevance is supported by the official description. Local telemetry, administrative practices, and asset criticality are required to determine whether any specific Tasklist execution is suspicious.
Tasklist
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1057 | Process Discovery | Tasklist can be used to discover processes running on a system.CitationMicrosoft Tasklist |
| Enterprise | T1007 | System Service Discovery | Tasklist can be used to discover services running on a system.CitationMicrosoft Tasklist |
| Enterprise | T1518.001 | Security Software Discovery Sub-technique | Tasklist can be used to enumerate security software currently running on a system by process name of known products.CitationMicrosoft Tasklist |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G1053: Storm-0501
Storm-0501 is a financially motivated cyber criminal group that uses commodity and open-source tools to conduct ransomware operations. Storm-0501 has been active since 2021 and has previously been affiliated with Sabbath Ransomware and other Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) variants such as Hive, BlackCat, Hunters International, LockBit 3.0, and Embargo ransomware.[1][2][3][4]
G1023: APT5
APT5 is a China-based espionage actor that has been active since at least 2007 primarily targeting the telecommunications, aerospace, and defense industries throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. APT5 has displayed advanced tradecraft and significant interest in compromising networking devices and their underlying software including through the use of zero-day exploits.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
G0016: APT29
APT29 is threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).[1][2] They have operated since at least 2008, often targeting government networks in Europe and NATO member countries, research institutes, and think tanks. APT29 reportedly compromised the Democratic National Committee starting in the summer of 2015.[3][4][5][6]
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to the SVR; public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[7][8] Industry reporting also referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, StellarParticle, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[9][10][11][12][13][14]
G1054: MirrorFace
MirrorFace is a People's Republic of China (PRC)-aligned cyberespionage actor believed to be a subgroup under the menuPass umbrella based on targeting, tools, and infrastructure overlaps. MirrorFace has been active since at least 2019, at first exclusively targeting Japanese organizations across the media, defense, diplomatic, financial, manufacturing, and academic sectors. Subsequent MirrorFace operations included targets in Central Europe and featured use of LODEINFO, HiddenFace, and UPPERCUT malware.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
G0049: OilRig
OilRig is a suspected Iranian threat group that has targeted Middle Eastern and international victims since at least 2014. The group has targeted a variety of sectors, including financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications. It appears the group carries out supply chain attacks, leveraging the trust relationship between organizations to attack their primary targets. The group works on behalf of the Iranian government based on infrastructure details that contain references to Iran, use of Iranian infrastructure, and targeting that aligns with nation-state interests.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
G0004: Ke3chang
G1006: Earth Lusca
Earth Lusca is a suspected China-based cyber espionage group that has been active since at least April 2019. Earth Lusca has targeted organizations in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Germany, France, and the United States. Targets included government institutions, news media outlets, gambling companies, educational institutions, COVID-19 research organizations, telecommunications companies, religious movements banned in China, and cryptocurrency trading platforms; security researchers assess some Earth Lusca operations may be financially motivated.[1]
Earth Lusca has used malware commonly used by other Chinese threat groups, including APT41 and the Winnti Group cluster, however security researchers assess Earth Lusca's techniques and infrastructure are separate.[1]
G1017: Volt Typhoon
Volt Typhoon is a People's Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored actor that has been active since at least 2021, primarily targeting critical infrastructure organizations in the US and its territories including Guam. Volt Typhoon's targeting and pattern of behavior have been assessed as pre-positioning to enable lateral movement to operational technology (OT) assets for potential destructive or disruptive attacks. Volt Typhoon has emphasized stealth in operations using web shells, living-off-the-land (LOTL) binaries, hands on keyboard activities, and stolen credentials.[1][2][3][4]. The group has leveraged compromised SOHO routers to proxy command and control traffic and obscure its infrastructure, activity associated with the KV botnet.[5].
Reporting indicates a separate initial access cluster, SYLVANITE, has been observed exploiting internet-facing edge devices and transferring access to Volt Typhoon, also tracked as VOLTZITE, for follow-on operations. [6]
G0006: APT1
G0027: Threat Group-3390
Threat Group-3390 is a Chinese threat group that has extensively used strategic Web compromises to target victims.[1] The group has been active since at least 2010 and has targeted organizations in the aerospace, government, defense, technology, energy, manufacturing and gambling/betting sectors.[2][3][4]
G0009: Deep Panda
Deep Panda is a suspected Chinese threat group known to target many industries, including government, defense, financial, and telecommunications. [1] The intrusion into healthcare company Anthem has been attributed to Deep Panda. [2] This group is also known as Shell Crew, WebMasters, KungFu Kittens, and PinkPanther. [3] Deep Panda also appears to be known as Black Vine based on the attribution of both group names to the Anthem intrusion. [4] Some analysts track Deep Panda and APT19 as the same group, but it is unclear from open source information if the groups are the same. [5]
G0010: Turla
Turla is a cyber espionage threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). They have compromised victims in over 50 countries since at least 2004, spanning a range of industries including government, embassies, military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies. Turla is known for conducting watering hole and spearphishing campaigns, and leveraging in-house tools and malware, such as Uroburos.[1][2][3][4][5]
C0007: FunnyDream
FunnyDream was a suspected Chinese cyber espionage campaign that targeted government and foreign organizations in Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other parts of Southeast Asia. Security researchers linked the FunnyDream campaign to possible Chinese-speaking threat actors through the use of the Chinoxy backdoor and noted infrastructure overlap with the TAG-16 threat group.[1][2][3]
C0006: Operation Honeybee
Operation Honeybee was a campaign that targeted humanitarian aid and inter-Korean affairs organizations from at least late 2017 through early 2018. Operation Honeybee initially targeted South Korea, but expanded to include Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Argentina, and Canada. Security researchers assessed the threat actors were likely Korean speakers based on metadata used in both lure documents and executables, and named the campaign "Honeybee" after the author name discovered in malicious Word documents.[1]
C0063: 2025 Poland Wiper Attacks
2025 Poland Wiper Attacks is a Russian state-sponsored campaign that conducted destructive cyberattacks against Polish energy infrastructure in December 2025. Targets included more than 30 wind and photovoltaic farms, a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, and a manufacturing sector company. The attacks on the distributed energy resources (DER) disrupted communications between affected facilities and the distribution system operator, but did not impact electricity generation or heat supply. Across the campaign, threat actors deployed two previously undocumented wiper tools, DynoWiper, a Windows-based wiper and LazyWiper, a PowerShell wiper, distributed via malicious Group Policy Objects. At the CHP plant, threat actors had maintained access since at least March 2025, using that foothold to obtain credentials and move laterally before attempting wiper deployment. Some reporting has assessed the activity to be consistent with Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) threat activity group Dragonfly, also tracked as STATIC TUNDRA, while other reporting attributes the destructive wiper activities to the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) threat activity group ELECTRUM, also tracked as Sandworm Team.[1][2][3][4]
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.3 | Current bundle | be1b38b5e784… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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[1]
Microsoft Tasklist
Microsoft. (n.d.). Tasklist. Retrieved December 23, 2015.
Open source URL -
[2]
mitre-attack S0057Open source URL
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