Detection rules › Splunk

Detect Password Spray Attack Behavior From Source

Author
Steven Dick
Source
upstream

The following analytic identifies one source failing to authenticate with 10 or more unique users. This behavior could represent an adversary performing a Password Spraying attack to obtain initial access or elevate privileges. This logic can be used for real time security monitoring as well as threat hunting exercises and works well against any number of data sources ingested into the CIM datamodel. Environments can be very different depending on the organization. Test and customize this detections thresholds if needed.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Credential AccessT1110.003 Brute Force: Password Spraying

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Security-Auditing4624An account was successfully logged on.
Security-Auditing4625An account failed to log on.

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: tstats

tstats BY Authentication.action, Authentication.app, Authentication.authentication_method, Authentication.dest, Authentication.signature, Authentication.signature_id, Authentication.src, Authentication.user

Stage 2: search

search

Stage 3: eval

eval ... using (action, count, null)

Stage 4: stats

stats BY src

Stage 5: fields

fields _time

Stage 6: where

where .25> failed_dc> user_dc>=10

Stage 7: search

search

Stage 8: search

search

Stage 9: search

search `macro`

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

FieldKindValues
user_dcge
  • 10