:warning: THIS IS A EXPERIMENTAL DETECTION

This detection has been marked experimental by the Splunk Threat Research team. This means we have not been able to test, simulate, or build datasets for this detection. Use at your own risk. This analytic is NOT supported.

Try in Splunk Security Cloud

Description

This search looks for Windows endpoints that have not generated an event indicating a successful Windows update in the last 60 days. Windows updates are typically released monthly and applied shortly thereafter. An endpoint that has not successfully applied an update in this time frame indicates the endpoint is not regularly being patched for some reason.

  • Type: Hunting
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Updates
  • Last Updated: 2017-09-15
  • Author: Bhavin Patel, Splunk
  • ID: 1a77c08c-2f56-409c-a2d3-7d64617edd4f

Annotations

ATT&CK
Kill Chain Phase
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • PR.PT
  • PR.MA
CIS20
  • CIS 18
CVE 


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| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Updates where Updates.status=Installed Updates.vendor_product="Microsoft Windows" by Updates.dest Updates.status Updates.vendor_product 
| rename Updates.dest as Host 
| rename Updates.status as "Update Status" 
| rename Updates.vendor_product as Product 
| eval isOutlier=if(lastTime <= relative_time(now(), "-60d@d"), 1, 0)  
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`  
| search isOutlier=1 
| rename lastTime as "Last Update Time", 
| table Host, "Update Status", Product, "Last Update Time" 
| `no_windows_updates_in_a_time_frame_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: no_windows_updates_in_a_time_frame_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Required fields

List of fields required to use this analytic.

  • _time
  • Updates.status
  • Updates.vendor_product
  • Updates.dest

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search, it requires that the 'Update' data model is being populated. This can be accomplished by ingesting Windows events or the Windows Update log via a universal forwarder on the Windows endpoints you wish to monitor. The Windows add-on should be also be installed and configured to properly parse Windows events in Splunk. There may be other data sources which can populate this data model, including vulnerability management systems.

Known False Positives

None identified

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
25.0 50 50 tbd

:information_source: The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

Reference

Test Dataset

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

source | version: 1