LoFP LoFP / it is common to see a spike of legitimate failed authentication events on monday mornings.

Techniques

Sample rules

Detect Distributed Password Spray Attempts

Description

This analytic employs the 3-sigma approach to identify distributed password spray attacks. A distributed password spray attack is a type of brute force attack where the attacker attempts a few common passwords against many different accounts, connecting from multiple IP addresses to avoid detection. By utilizing the Authentication Data Model, this detection is effective for all CIM-mapped authentication events, providing comprehensive coverage and enhancing security against these attacks.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` dc(Authentication.user) AS unique_accounts dc(Authentication.src) as unique_src values(Authentication.app) as app values(Authentication.src) as src count(Authentication.user) as total_failures from datamodel=Authentication.Authentication where Authentication.action="failure" NOT Authentication.src IN ("-","unknown") Authentication.user_agent="*" by Authentication.signature_id, Authentication.user_agent, sourcetype, _time  span=10m 
| `drop_dm_object_name("Authentication")` ```fill out time buckets for 0-count events during entire search length``` 
| appendpipe [
| timechart limit=0 span=10m count 
| table _time] 
| fillnull value=0 unique_accounts, unique_src ``` Create aggregation field & apply to all null events``` 
| eval counter=sourcetype+"__"+signature_id 
| eventstats values(counter) as fnscounter 
| eval counter=coalesce(counter,fnscounter)  
| stats values(total_failures) as total_failures values(signature_id) as signature_id values(src) as src values(sourcetype) as sourcetype values(app) as app count by counter unique_accounts unique_src user_agent _time
  ``` remove 0 count rows where counter has data```

| sort - _time unique_accounts 
| dedup _time counter ``` 3-sigma detection logic ``` 
| eventstats avg(unique_accounts) as comp_avg_user , stdev(unique_accounts) as comp_std_user avg(unique_src) as comp_avg_src , stdev(unique_src) as comp_std_src by counter user_agent 
| eval upperBoundUser=(comp_avg_user+comp_std_user*3), upperBoundsrc=(comp_avg_src+comp_std_src*3) 
| eval isOutlier=if((unique_accounts > 30 and unique_accounts >= upperBoundUser) and (unique_src > 30 and unique_src >= upperBoundsrc), 1, 0) 
| replace "::ffff:*" with * in src 
| where isOutlier=1 
| foreach * 
    [ eval <<FIELD>> = if(<<FIELD>>="null",null(),<<FIELD>>)] 

| mvexpand src  
| iplocation src  
| table _time, unique_src, unique_accounts, total_failures, sourcetype, signature_id, user_agent, src, Country 
| eval date_wday=strftime(_time,"%a"), date_hour=strftime(_time,"%H") 
| `detect_distributed_password_spray_attempts_filter`