// question

A Windows host recorded a process that simply executes the system’s native time utility. Without spelling out the query, determine which command was run based on process creation events.

Reference KQL answer and model-by-model comparison.

53ead5db-7098-4111-bb3f-563be390e72e
question id
11/23
models correct
1
valid answer
48%
success rate
// reference answer

Human-validated correct answer for this question.

time
// model comparison
ModelAnswerKQL queryStatusTriesTimeCost
gemini-2.5-flash-preview-04-17
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0233
gpt-35-turbo
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0108
gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.2280
gpt-4.1
cmd.exe /c time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where FileName =~ "cmd.exe"
| where ActionType == "ProcessCreated"
| where ProcessCommandLine matches regex @"\btime\b"
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, AccountName, FolderPath, FileName, ProcessCommandLine
pass27.67s0.0150
gpt-4.1-finetuned
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0363
gpt-4.1-mini
w32tm /tz
DeviceProcessEvents
| where FileName in ("w32tm.exe", "time.exe")
| project DeviceName, ProcessCommandLine, ProcessCreationTime
| order by ProcessCreationTime desc
fail17.41s0.0023
gpt-4.1-nano
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0017
gpt-4o
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0476
gpt-5-high
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.2453
gpt-5-mini-high
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where isnotempty(ProcessCommandLine)
| where FileName =~ "time.exe" or FileName =~ "w32tm.exe" or ProcessCommandLine matches regex @"\b(time|time\.exe|w32tm|w32tm\.exe)\b"
| extend Command = trim("\"' ", ProcessCommandLine)
| summarize Count = count(), FirstSeen = min(TimeGenerated), LastSeen = max(TimeGenerated) by DeviceName, FileName, ProcessId, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessId, Command
| order by LastSeen desc
pass124.55s0.0087
gpt-5-mini-low
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where FileName has_cs "time" or ProcessCommandLine has_cs "time" or ProcessCommandLine has_cs "get-date" or ProcessCommandLine has_cs "w32tm"
| extend FileNameLower = tolower(FileName), Cmd = tostring(ProcessCommandLine)
| where FileNameLower in ("time.exe","time") or Cmd has_cs " time " or Cmd startswith_cs "time" or Cmd contains "/c time" or Cmd has_cs "get-date" or Cmd has_cs "w32tm"
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, AccountName, AccountDomain, ProcessId, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessId, FileName, ProcessCommandLine
| order by TimeGenerated desc
| distinct DeviceName, TimeGenerated, ProcessId, FileName, ProcessCommandLine, AccountName, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessId
| limit 100
pass110.50s0.0029
gpt-5-mini-medium
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0117
gpt-5-nano-high
cmd.exe /c time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where (InitiatingProcessFileName has_cs "cmd.exe" and (ProcessCommandLine has_cs "time" or InitiatingProcessCommandLine has_cs "time")) or (FileName has_cs "time.exe" or FileName has_cs "time" or (ProcessCommandLine has_cs "time"))
| extend CmdLine = coalesce(ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessCommandLine)
| extend TimeArg = extract(@"(?i)time(?:\\.exe)?\\s*(.*)", 1, CmdLine)
| extend DetectedTimeRun = strcat("time", iff(isempty(TimeArg), "", strcat(" ", TimeArg)))
| project TimeGenerated = ProcessCreationTime, DeviceName, InitiatingProcessAccountDomain, InitiatingProcessAccountName, CmdLine, DetectedTimeRun
| sort by TimeGenerated desc
pass277.00s0.0062
gpt-5-nano-medium
time
let TimeWindow = 1d;
DeviceProcessEvents
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(TimeWindow)
| where (tolower(FileName) endswith "time.exe" or tolower(FileName) endswith "time" or tolower(ProcessCommandLine) contains "time" or tolower(InitiatingProcessCommandLine) contains "time")
| extend IsCmdLauncher = (tolower(InitiatingProcessFileName) endswith "cmd.exe" or tolower(InitiatingProcessFileName) endswith "cmd")
| extend RunType = case(
    tolower(FileName) endswith "time.exe", "time.exe external",
    IsCmdLauncher and (tolower(ProcessCommandLine) contains "time" or tolower(InitiatingProcessCommandLine) contains "time"), "cmd built-in time",
    IsCmdLauncher, "cmd built-in time",
    "other"
)
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FileName, ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, RunType
| summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, *) by DeviceName
| sort by TimeGenerated desc
pass4130.81s0.0078
grok-3-beta
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where FileName has 'time' or ProcessCommandLine has 'time'
| project DeviceName, ProcessCommandLine, FileName, ProcessCreationTime, FolderPath
| top 100 by ProcessCreationTime desc
pass216.01s0.0811
grok-3-mini-beta
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where ActionType == "ProcessCreated"
| where ProcessCommandLine has_any ("time")
| project DeviceName, ProcessCommandLine, Timestamp
| order by Timestamp desc
pass119.97s0.0058
o1-high
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where ActionType == "ProcessCreated"
| where FileName in~ ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe")
| where tolower(ProcessCommandLine) has "time"
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FolderPath, FileName, ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, AccountName, AccountDomain
| order by TimeGenerated desc
pass250.06s0.3959
o1-low
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where ActionType == "ProcessCreated"
| where FileName =~ "cmd.exe" or FileName =~ "powershell.exe" or FileName =~ "time.exe"
| where ProcessCommandLine has "time"
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FolderPath, ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, AccountName, AccountDomain, SHA1, MD5
pass254.02s0.4051
o3-high
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where ActionType == "ProcessCreated"
// --- direct execution of the utility ---
| where FileName =~ "time.exe" or 
       (FileName =~ "cmd.exe" and tolower(ProcessCommandLine) matches regex @"/c\s+time(\s+/t)?\b")
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, AccountDomain, AccountName,
          FileName, ProcessCommandLine,
          InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine
| order by TimeGenerated desc
pass264.85s0.0429
o3-mini-high
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0380
o3-mini-low
time
DeviceProcessEvents
| where tolower(FileName) == "time.exe" or (tolower(ProcessCommandLine) has "time" and tolower(FolderPath) contains "system32")
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, FileName, ProcessCommandLine
| order by TimeGenerated desc
pass590.27s0.0492
o4-mini-high
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0412
o4-mini-low
no answer
no query generatedfail50.00s0.0319