Detection rules › Splunk

Windows Steal Authentication Certificates Certificate Issued

Author
Michael Haag, Splunk
Source
upstream

The following analytic identifies the issuance of a new certificate by Certificate Services - AD CS, detected via Event ID 4887. This event logs the requester user context, DNS hostname of the requesting machine, and the request time. Monitoring this activity is crucial as it can indicate potential misuse of authentication certificates. If confirmed malicious, an attacker could use the issued certificate to impersonate users, escalate privileges, or maintain persistence within the environment. This detection helps in identifying and correlating suspicious certificate-related activities for further investigation.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Credential AccessT1649 Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Security-Auditing4887Certificate Services approved a certificate request and issued a certificate.

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: search

search EventCode=4887

Stage 2: stats

stats BY dest, name, Requester, action, Attributes, Subject

Stage 3: search

search

Stage 4: search

search

Stage 5: 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
EventCodeeq
  • 4887