Autostart

Auto-start (ASEP)

A system backend, and one of the Windows layers. This is the Autoruns surface: what the machine runs at logon, whether or not a package owns it.

It enumerates and scores. Each entry is resolved to a target, and the target is what gets judged.

What is enumerated

Group	Locations
Run keys	Run, RunOnce, RunOnceEx, RunServices, RunServicesOnce — HKLM, HKCU, and the WOW6432Node view
Policy	Policies\Explorer\Run (HKLM and HKCU)
Startup folders	The user's and the common one
Winlogon	Userinit, Shell, System, AppSetup, Taskman
Legacy	Windows\Load, Windows\Run, UserInitMprLogonScript

For each entry postmortem records the location, the raw command, the hive, the resolved target, whether that target exists, and whether the directory holding it can be written without elevation.

Resolving the target

Registry commands are not quoted consistently. A quoted path is authoritative; otherwise the longest leading prefix ending in an executable extension wins, which is how Windows itself resolves the ambiguity:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\...\setup.exe" --on-logon   ->  quoted path + args
C:\Program Files\Thing\run.exe --flag               ->  split at .exe, not at the space

Two shapes that a naive resolver gets wrong, both found on a real machine:

• A bare name is not a dangling entry. Shell = explorer.exe has no path; Windows resolves it through PATH at run time.
• Userinit is a comma-separated list. Its trailing comma is not part of a path — each element is its own entry.

Risk signals

Signal	Severity	Meaning
autostart target is missing	Medium / High	The entry points at a file that is not there. High when the directory is writable.
autostart from a user-writable directory	Low / High	See below.
autostart command uses <interpreter>	High	The command line runs something it does not name.

Signature findings come from binary trust and apply to the resolved target — an unsigned binary that runs at every logon is worse than one that runs when asked.

Why a writable path is not one severity

An HKCU entry runs as the very user who can write to that directory, so a user-writable path crosses no privilege boundary. On a reference machine OneDrive, Teams and Discord all auto-start from %LOCALAPPDATA% by design; scoring those as highly as a real escalation would drown the signal.

An HKLM entry runs at machine scope. The same writable directory then means an unprivileged user decides what runs for everyone — that is High.

Why a missing target matters

A dangling entry is not untidy, it is a standing invitation: whoever can create that file inherits the auto-start. When the directory is also writable the two facts compound, so the finding is raised to High.

Interpreters in the command line

powershell -enc, mshta, wscript/cscript, rundll32, regsvr32, certutil, bitsadmin, an inline curl, Invoke-Expression, DownloadString, FromBase64String. One finding per entry — the command is the subject, not each token it contains.

Winlogon

These hooks run before the desktop does, and Windows ships exactly one value for each. A value that is not the shipped one is reported as a caveat rather than merely listed. The trailing comma on Userinit is present or absent depending on the build and means the same thing either way.

Not covered yet

This page covers the logon registry and Startup folders. Scheduled tasks, services and drivers and jobs and file-based persistence have their own pages. WMI subscriptions and COM hijacks are not enumerated yet.