ID | Technique | Tactic |
---|---|---|
T1189 | Drive-by Compromise | Initial Access |
Detection: Splunk list all nonstandard admin accounts
EXPERIMENTAL DETECTION
This detection status is set to experimental. The Splunk Threat Research team has not yet fully tested, simulated, or built comprehensive datasets for this detection. As such, this analytic is not officially supported. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us at research@splunk.com.
Description
The following analytic identifies nonstandard Splunk accounts with administrative rights on the instance, excluding the default admin account. It uses REST API calls to retrieve user data and filters for accounts with admin capabilities. This activity is significant as unauthorized admin accounts can indicate potential security breaches or misconfigurations. If confirmed malicious, attackers could leverage these accounts to execute commands, escalate privileges, or persist within the environment, posing a significant risk to the integrity and security of the Splunk instance.
Search
1
2| rest splunk_server=local /services/authentication/users
3|search capabilities=admin* OR imported_capabilities=admin* title!=admin
4| table title roles capabilities splunk_server
5| `splunk_list_all_nonstandard_admin_accounts_filter`
Data Source
Name | Platform | Sourcetype | Source | Supported App |
---|---|---|---|---|
Splunk | Splunk | 'splunkd_ui_access' |
'splunkd_ui_access.log' |
N/A |
Macros Used
Name | Value |
---|
| splunk_list_all_nonstandard_admin_accounts_filter | search *
|
splunk_list_all_nonstandard_admin_accounts_filter
is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.
Annotations
Default Configuration
This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:
Setting | Value |
---|---|
Disabled | true |
Cron Schedule | 0 * * * * |
Earliest Time | -70m@m |
Latest Time | -10m@m |
Schedule Window | auto |
Creates Risk Event | False |
Implementation
The user running this search is required to have a permission allowing them to dispatch REST requests to indexers (the dispatch_rest_to_indexers
capability) in some architectures. If there have been admin account, in addition to the standard admin account, intentionally created on this server, then edit the filter macro to exclude them.
Known False Positives
It is not possible to discern from the user table whether or not users with admin rights have been created intentionally, accidentally, or as a result of exploitation. Each user with these rights should be investigated and, if legitimate, added to the filter macro above. If a user is not believed to be legitimate, then further investigation should take place.
Associated Analytic Story
Risk Based Analytics (RBA)
Risk Message | Risk Score | Impact | Confidence |
---|---|---|---|
Potential stored XSS attempt from $host$ | 25 | 50 | 50 |
References
Detection Testing
Test Type | Status | Dataset | Source | Sourcetype |
---|---|---|---|---|
Validation | Not Applicable | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Unit | ❌ Failing | N/A | N/A |
N/A |
Integration | ❌ Failing | N/A | N/A |
N/A |
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: GitHub | Version: 2