Azure Service Principal Addition

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Identifies when a new service principal is added in Azure. An application, hosted service, or automated tool that accesses or modifies resources needs an identity created. This identity is known as a service principal. For security reasons, it’s always recommended to use service principals with automated tools rather than allowing them to log in with a user identity.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • logs-azure*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-25m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Cloud
  • Azure
  • Continuous Monitoring
  • SecOps
  • Identity and Access

Version: 4 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.13.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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A service principal may be created by a system or network administrator. Verify whether the username, hostname, and/or resource name should be making changes in your environment. Service principal additions from unfamiliar users or hosts should be investigated. If known behavior is causing false positives, it can be exempted from the rule.

Investigation guide

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## Config

The Azure Fleet integration, Filebeat module, or similarly structured data is required to be compatible with this rule.

Rule query

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event.dataset:azure.auditlogs and azure.auditlogs.operation_name:"Add
service principal" and event.outcome:(success or Success)

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 4 (7.13.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only