User Fields Usage and Examples

Here are the subjects covered in this page.

User fields can be present in any kind of event, without affecting the event’s categorization.

However when the event is about IAM (Identity and Account Management), it should be categorized as follows. In this section we’ll cover specifically event.category and event.type with regards to IAM activity. Make sure to read the Categorization section to see all allowed values, and read more about event.kind and event.outcome.

Many sections of the examples below are elided, in order to focus on the categorization of the events.

Creation of group "test-group":

{
  "event": {
    "kind": "event",
    "category": ["iam"], 
    "type": ["group", "creation"], 
    "outcome": "success"
  },
  "group": { "name": "test-group", ... },
  "user": { ... },
  "related": { "user": [ ... ] }
}

Adding "test-user" to "test-group":

{
  "event": {
    "kind": "event",
    "category": ["iam"], 
    "type": ["user", "change"], 
    "action": "user added to group", 
    "outcome": "success"
  },
  "user": {
    ...
    "target": { 
      "name": "test-user",
      "group": { "name": "test-group" }
    }
  },
  "related": { "user": [ ... ] }
}

Different systems use different values for user identifiers. Here are a few pointers to help normalize some simple cases.

The user fields can be reused (or appear) in many places across ECS. This makes it possible to capture many users relevant to a single event.

Here’s the full list of places where the user fields can appear:

Let’s go over the meaning of each.

The examples below will only populate user.name and sometimes user.id inside the various user nestings, for readability. However in implementations, unless otherwise noted, all user fields that can reasonably be populated in each location should be populated.

The user fields at the root of an event are used to capture the user performing the main action described by the event. This is especially important when there’s more than one user present on the event. user.* fields at the root of the event represent the user performing the action.

In many cases, events that only mention one user should populate the user fields at the root of the event, even if the user is not the one performing the action.

In cases where a purpose-specific user field such as url.username is populated, user.name should also be populated with the same user name.

{
  "url": { "username": "alice" }, 
  "user": { "name": "alice" }, 
  "related": { "user": ["alice"] }
}

When users are crossing host boundaries, the users are captured at source.user and destination.user.

Examples of data sources where this is applicable:

In order to align with ECS' design of having user at the root of the event as the user performing the action, all source.user fields should be copied to user at the root.

Here’s an example where user "alice" logs on to another host as user "deus":

{
  "user": {
    "name": "alice"
  },
  "source": {
    "user": {
      "name": "alice"
    },
    "ip": "10.42.42.42"
  },
  "destination": {
    "user": {
      "name": "deus"
    },
    "ip": "10.42.42.43"
  },
  "related": { "user": ["alice", "deus"] }
}

Whenever an event source populates the client and server fields in addition to source and destination, the user fields should be copied accordingly as well. You can review Mapping Network Events to learn more about mapping network events.

The user.effective fields are relevant when there’s a privilege escalation or demotion and it’s possible to determine the user requesting/performing the escalation.

Use the user fields at the root to capture who is requesting the privilege change, and user.effective to capture the requested privilege level, whether or not the privilege change was successful.

Here are examples where this is applicable:

In cases where the event source only gives information about the effective user and not who requested different privileges, the user fields at the root of the event should be used instead of user.effective.

Here’s an example of user "alice" running a command as root via sudo:

{
  "user": {
    "name": "alice",
    "id": "1001",
    "effective": {
      "name": "root",
      "id": "1"
    }
  },
  "related": { "user": ["alice", "root"] }
}

When it’s not possible (or it’s prohibitive) to determine which user is requesting different privilege levels, it’s acceptable to capture the effective user at the root of the event. Typically a privilege change event will already have happened, for example: bob "su" as root; and subsequent events will show the root user performing the actions.

Whenever a user is performing an action that affects another user — typically in IAM scenarios — the user affected by the action is captured at user.target. The user performing the IAM activity is captured at the root of the event.

Examples of IAM activity include:

In the create/delete scenarios, there’s either no prior state (user creation) or no post state (user deletion). In these cases, only user at the root and user.target must be populated.

Example where "root" creates user "bob":

{
  "user": {
    "name": "root",
    "id": "1",
    "target": {
      "name": "bob",
      "id": "1002",
      ...
    }
  }
  "related": { "user": ["bob", "root"] }
}

When there’s a change of state to an existing user, user.target must be used to capture the prior state of the user, and user.changes should list only the changes that were performed.

Example where "root" renames user "bob" to "bob.barker":

{
  "user": {
    "name": "root",
    "id": "1",
    "target": {
      "name": "bob",
      "id": "1002"
    },
    "changes": {
      "name": "bob.barker"
    }
  },
  "related": { "user": ["bob", "bob.barker", "root"] }
}

You’ll note in the example above that unmodified attributes like the user ID are not repeated under user.changes.*, since they didn’t change.

We’ve covered above how user.target and user.changes can be used at the same time. If privilege escalation is also present in the same IAM event, user.effective should of course be used as well.

Here’s the "rename" example from the IAM section above. In the following example, we know "alice" is escalating privileges to "root", in order to modify user "bob":

{
  "user": {
    "name": "alice",
    "id": "1001",
    "effective": {
      "name": "root",
      "id": "1"
    },
    "target": {
      "name": "bob",
      "id": "1002"
    },
    "changes": {
      "name": "bob.barker"
    }
  },
  "related": { "user": ["alice", "bob", "bob.barker", "root"] }
}

Most cases of field reuse in ECS are reusing a field set inside a different field set. Two examples of this are:

The user fields can also be reused within user as different names, representing the role of each relevant user. Examples are the user.target.* or user.effective.* fields.

However, it’s important to note that user fields reused within user are not carried around anywhere else. Let’s illustrate the various permutations of what’s valid and what is not.

In all events in this page, we’ve populated the related.user fields.

Any event that has users in it should always populate the array field related.user with all usernames seen in the event; including event names that appear in custom fields. Note that this field is not a nesting of all user fields, it’s a flat array meant to contain user identifiers.

Taking the example from user.changes again, we can see that no matter the role of the each user (before/after privilege escalation, affected user, username after rename), they are all present in related.user:

{
  "user": {
    "name": "alice",
    "id": "1001",
    "effective": {
      "name": "root",
      "id": "1"
    },
    "target": {
      "name": "bob",
      "id": "1002"
    },
    "changes": {
      "name": "bob.barker"
    }
  },
  "related": { "user": ["alice", "root", "bob", "bob.barker"] }
}

Like the other fields in the related field set, related.user is meant to facilitate pivoting. For example, if you have a suspicion about user "bob.barker", searching for this name in related.user will give you all events related to this user, whether it’s the creation / rename of the user, or events where this user was active in a system.

For examples of mapping events from various sources, you can look at RFC 0007 in section Source Data.

As of ECS 1.8, host.user.* fields are deprecated and will be removed at the next major version of ECS.