Potential Signals of An Active Threat - mccright/FCCSCybersecurityInput GitHub Wiki

What Are Some Events You Can Analyze?


  • Account Authenticated To Critical Asset: A new user authenticates to a restricted asset.
  • Account Authenticated To Critical Asset From New Source: A permitted user authenticates to a restricted asset from a new source asset.
  • Account Authenticates With New Asset: A permitted user is authenticating to an application from a new source asset.
  • Account Created: An account was created on a 'monitored' or 'flagged' asset.
  • Account Enabled: A previously-disabled user account is re-enabled by an identity using an administrator role.
  • Account Leak: A user's credentials may have been leaked to the public domain.
  • Account Password Reset: A user resets the password for an account (special emphasis on 'monitored' or 'flagged' accounts, out-of-norm times/locations/endpoints, etc.)
  • Account Privilege Escalated: An identity using administrator permissions assigns higher level of privileges to the account (special emphasis on 'monitored' or 'flagged' accounts, out-of-norm times/locations/endpoints, etc.).
  • Account Received Suspicious: Link A user receives an email containing a link flagged by 'threat feeds' or another trusted source of threat information.
  • Account Visits Suspicious Link: A user accesses a link URL identified as a threat by your 'threat feeds' or another trusted source of threat information.
  • Malware Alert: An malware-identification system generates an alert.
  • Asset Connects To Network Honeypot: There was an attempt to interact with to a network honeypot -- or some level of 'successful' interaction.
  • Attacker Behavior Analytics: A detection model in your intrustion detection system fired -- alerting you for follow-up analysis and correlation with threat intelligence inputs.
  • Authentication Attempt From Disabled Account: A disabled user attempts to authenticate and/or directly access an asset.
  • Brute Force Attack Against Domain Account: One or more sources/assets has unsuccessfully attempted to authenticate using a domain account too many times within a given time threshold.
  • Brute Force Attack Against Local Account: One or more sources/assets has unsuccessfully attempted to authenticate using a local account too many times within a given time threshold.
  • Brute Force From Unknown Source: One or more unknown/unauthorized sources/assets failed to authenticate using a local account too many times within a given time threshold.
  • Domain Admin Added: A user has been added to a privileged group.
  • Local Admin Added: A user has been added to a privileged group.
  • First Ingress Authentication From Country: A user logged onto the network/system for the first time from a given country.
  • First Time Admin Action: An identity using administrator rights was employed for the first time in this domain or on this asset.
  • Harvested Credentials: Multiple accounts are attempting to authenticate to a single, unusual location.
  • Ingress From Disabled Account: A disabled user logs onto the network or a monitored cloud service.
  • Ingress From Non Expiring Account: An account with a password that never expires accesses the network from an external location.
  • Ingress From Service Account: A service account accesses the network from an external location.
  • Lateral Movement Domain Credentials: A domain account attempts to access several new assets in a short period of time.
  • Lateral Movement Local Credentials: A local account attempts to access several assets in a short period of time.
  • Log Deletion: A user deletes event logs on an asset.
  • Log Deletion: Local Account A local account deletes event logs on an asset.
  • Malicious Hash On An Asset: A flagged process hash starts running on an asset for the first time.
  • Multiple Country Authentications: A user accesses the network from several different countries within a short period of time.
  • Multiple Organization Authentications: A user accesses the network from multiple external organizations too quickly.
  • Network Access For Threat: A user accesses a domain or IP address tagged in the Threats section.
  • New Local User Primary Asset: A new local user account was added to the primary asset of a domain user.
  • New Mobile Device: A user accesses the network from a new mobile device.
  • Password Set To Never Expire: A password of an account has been set to never expire.
  • Protocol Poison: Misuse of a network protocol is detected
  • Volume change in the pattern of any given data communications flow relative to 'historical' flows
  • Change in the data 'payload' characteristics of any given data communications flow relative to 'historical' flows
  • ...and many, many more
    Most of these bullets are FROM: Rapid7 https://www.rapid7.com/globalassets/_images/research-images/threat-report/2019-q1/rapid7-threat-report-appendix-b.pdf