LoFP LoFP / administrator may legitimately create service principal. filter as needed.

Techniques

Sample rules

Azure AD Service Principal Created

Description

The following analytic detects the creation of a Service Principal in an Azure AD environment. It leverages Azure Active Directory events ingested through EventHub, specifically monitoring the “Add service principal” operation. This activity is significant because Service Principals can be used by adversaries to establish persistence and bypass multi-factor authentication and conditional access policies. If confirmed malicious, this could allow attackers to maintain single-factor access to the Azure AD environment, potentially leading to unauthorized access to resources and prolonged undetected activity.

Detection logic

`azure_monitor_aad`  operationName="Add service principal" properties.initiatedBy.user.id=* 
| rename properties.* as * 
| rename targetResources{}.displayName as displayName 
| rename targetResources{}.type as type 
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime values(displayName) as displayName by type, user, result, operationName 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `azure_ad_service_principal_created_filter`