Detection: O365 Service Principal New Client Credentials

Description

The following analytic detects the addition of new credentials for Service Principals within an Office 365 tenant. It uses O365 audit logs, focusing on events related to credential modifications or additions in the AzureActiveDirectory workload. This activity is significant because Service Principals represent application identities, and their credentials allow applications to authenticate and access resources. If an attacker successfully adds or modifies these credentials, they can impersonate the application, leading to unauthorized data access, data exfiltration, or malicious operations under the application's identity.

1`o365_management_activity` Workload=AzureActiveDirectory Operation="Update application*Certificates and secrets management " 
2|  stats earliest(_time) as firstTime latest(_time) as lastTime by user ModifiedProperties{}.NewValue object ObjectId 
3| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
4| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
5| `o365_service_principal_new_client_credentials_filter`

Data Source

Name Platform Sourcetype Source Supported App
O365 N/A 'o365:management:activity' 'o365' N/A

Macros Used

Name Value
o365_management_activity sourcetype=o365:management:activity
o365_service_principal_new_client_credentials_filter search *
o365_service_principal_new_client_credentials_filter is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Annotations

- MITRE ATT&CK
+ Kill Chain Phases
+ NIST
+ CIS
- Threat Actors
ID Technique Tactic
T1098 Account Manipulation Persistence
T1098.001 Additional Cloud Credentials Privilege Escalation
KillChainPhase.EXPLOITAITON
KillChainPhase.INSTALLATION
NistCategory.DE_CM
Cis18Value.CIS_10
APT3
APT41
APT5
Dragonfly
FIN13
HAFNIUM
Kimsuky
Lazarus Group
Magic Hound

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 Notable Yes
Rule Title %name%
Rule Description %description%
Notable Event Fields user, dest
Creates Risk Event True
This configuration file applies to all detections of type TTP. These detections will use Risk Based Alerting and generate Notable Events.

Implementation

You must install the Splunk Microsoft Office 365 Add-on and ingest Office 365 management activity events.

Known False Positives

Service Principal client credential modifications may be part of legitimate administrative operations. Filter as needed.

Associated Analytic Story

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Risk Message Risk Score Impact Confidence
New credentials added for Service Principal $object$ 35 70 50
The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

References

Detection Testing

Test Type Status Dataset Source Sourcetype
Validation Passing N/A N/A N/A
Unit Passing Dataset o365 o365:management:activity
Integration ✅ Passing Dataset o365 o365:management:activity

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: 3