O365 Mailbox Audit Logging Bypass

Detects the occurrence of mailbox audit bypass associations. The mailbox audit is responsible for logging specified mailbox events (like accessing a folder or a message or permanently deleting a message). However, actions taken by some authorized accounts, such as accounts used by third-party tools or accounts used for lawful monitoring, can create a large number of mailbox audit log entries and may not be of interest to your organization. Because of this, administrators can create bypass associations, allowing certain accounts to perform their tasks without being logged. Attackers can abuse this allowlist mechanism to conceal actions taken, as the mailbox audit will log no activity done by the account.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

filebeat-*
logs-o365*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-30m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

https://twitter.com/misconfig/status/1476144066807140355

Tags:

Elastic
Cloud
Microsoft 365
Continuous Monitoring
SecOps
Initial Access

Version: 6

Rule authors:

Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

edit

## Setup

The Office 365 Logs Fleet integration, Filebeat module, or similarly structured data is required to be compatible with this rule.

Rule query

edit

event.dataset:o365.audit and event.provider:Exchange and event.action:Set-MailboxAuditBypassAssociation and event.outcome:success

Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Defense Evasion
- ID: TA0005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/
Technique:
- Name: Impair Defenses
- ID: T1562
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/
Sub-technique:
- Name: Disable or Modify Tools
- ID: T1562.001
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/001/

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