Splunk list all nonstandard admin accounts

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.

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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.

Type: Hunting
Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
Last Updated: 2024-05-21
Author: Rod Soto
ID: 401d689c-8596-4c6b-a710-7b6fdca296d3

Annotations

ATT&CK

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1189	Drive-by Compromise	Initial Access

Kill Chain Phase

Delivery

NIST

DE.AE

CIS20

CIS 10

CVE

Search

| rest splunk_server=local /services/authentication/users 
|search capabilities=admin* OR imported_capabilities=admin* title!=admin 
| table title roles capabilities splunk_server 
| `splunk_list_all_nonstandard_admin_accounts_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

splunk_list_all_nonstandard_admin_accounts_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.

capabilities
splunk_server
title

How To Implement

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

Splunk Vulnerabilities

RBA

Risk Score	Impact	Confidence	Message
25.0	50	50	Potential stored XSS attempt from $host$

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

https://www.splunk.com/en_us/product-security.html

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: 2

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