Unusual Windows User Calling the Metadata Service

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Unusual Windows User Calling the Metadata Service

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Looks for anomalous access to the cloud platform metadata service by an unusual user. The metadata service may be targeted in order to harvest credentials or user data scripts containing secrets.

Rule type: machine_learning

Machine learning job: windows_rare_metadata_user, v2_windows_rare_metadata_user

Machine learning anomaly threshold: 75

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 15 minutes

Searches indices from: now-45m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • ML

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.14.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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A newly installed program, or one that runs under a new or rarely used user context, could trigger this detection rule. Manual interrogation of the metadata service during debugging or troubleshooting could trigger this rule.

Rule version history

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Version 3 (7.14.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only