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Description

This search looks for AWS CloudTrail events where a user successfully launches an abnormally high number of instances. This search is deprecated and have been translated to use the latest Change Datamodel.

  • Type: Anomaly

  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud

  • Last Updated: 2020-07-21
  • Author: Jason Brewer, Splunk
  • ID: dec41ad5-d579-42cb-b4c6-f5dbb778bbe5

Annotations

ATT&CK
ID Technique Tactic
T1078.004 Cloud Accounts Defense Evasion, Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation
Kill Chain Phase
  • Actions on Objectives
NIST
  • DE.DP
  • DE.AE
CIS20
  • CIS 13
CVE 
1
2
3
4
5
6

`cloudtrail` eventName=RunInstances errorCode=success `abnormally_high_aws_instances_launched_by_user___mltk_filter` 
| bucket span=10m _time  
| stats count as instances_launched by _time src_user  
| apply ec2_excessive_runinstances_v1  
| rename "IsOutlier(instances_launched)" as isOutlier  
| where isOutlier=1

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

Note that abnormally_high_aws_instances_launched_by_user_-_mltk_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Required field

  • _time
  • eventName
  • errorCode
  • src_user

How To Implement

You must install the AWS App for Splunk (version 5.1.0 or later) and Splunk Add-on for AWS (version 4.4.0 or later), then configure your AWS CloudTrail inputs. The threshold value should be tuned to your environment.

Known False Positives

Many service accounts configured within an AWS infrastructure are known to exhibit this behavior. Please adjust the threshold values and filter out service accounts from the output. Always verify if this search alerted on a human user.

Associated Analytic story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
25.0 50 50 tbd

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: 2