: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 cloud instances being modified by users who have not previously modified them.

  • Type: Anomaly
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Change
  • Last Updated: 2020-07-29
  • Author: Rico Valdez, Splunk
  • ID: 7fb15084-b14e-405a-bd61-a6de15a40722

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1078.004 Cloud Accounts Defense Evasion, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Initial Access
T1078 Valid Accounts Defense Evasion, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Initial Access
Kill Chain Phase
  • Exploitation
  • Installation
  • Delivery
NIST
  • DE.AE
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


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| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count earliest(_time) as firstTime, latest(_time) as lastTime values(All_Changes.object_id) as object_id values(All_Changes.command) as command from datamodel=Change where All_Changes.action=modified All_Changes.change_type=EC2 All_Changes.status=success by All_Changes.user 
| `drop_dm_object_name("All_Changes")` 
| lookup previously_seen_cloud_instance_modifications_by_user user as user OUTPUTNEW firstTimeSeen, enough_data 
| eventstats max(enough_data) as enough_data 
| where enough_data=1 
| eval firstTimeSeenUser=min(firstTimeSeen) 
| where isnull(firstTimeSeenUser) OR firstTimeSeenUser > relative_time(now(), "-24h@h") 
| table firstTime user command object_id count 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `cloud_instance_modified_by_previously_unseen_user_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

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

Lookups

The SPL above uses the following Lookups:

Required fields

List of fields required to use this analytic.

  • _time
  • All_Changes.object_id
  • All_Changes.command
  • All_Changes.action
  • All_Changes.change_type
  • All_Changes.status
  • All_Changes.user

How To Implement

This search has a dependency on other searches to create and update a baseline of users observed to be associated with this activity. The search "Previously Seen Cloud Instance Modifications By User - Update" should be enabled for this detection to properly work.

Known False Positives

It's possible that a new user will start to modify EC2 instances when they haven't before for any number of reasons. Verify with the user that is modifying instances that this is the intended behavior.

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
42.0 70 60 User $user$ is modifying an instance $object_id$ for the first time.

: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