What does the winrt-backgroundtaskevent msedge switch do?

Question

Is there any public documentation about what the "--winrt-backgroundtaskevent" switch for msedge does?

I have seen logs of this switch being followed by a base64 string, which when decoded contains what looks like AES-encrypted data being sent to a malicious looking URL.

I've tried looking up the switch on MSDN for more information but was not able to find anything about it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi @AP-BDS,

--winrt-backgroundtaskevent is not a browser-specific switch. It looks like some applications are using WebView2 (which is also shown as msedge.exe) and they are executed as a background task. Please look out for any suspicious application and disable them for a test.

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