ESXi Audit Records Disabled

[metadata]
creation_date = "2026/09/30"
integration = ["vsphere"]
maturity = "production"
updated_date = "2026/09/30"

[rule]
author = ["Elastic"]
description = """
Detects ESXi audit record transmission being turned off, locally or to a remote collector. Audit records are the
host's own trail of administrative changes. Disabling them means later changes to accounts, the firewall, and SSH
are not recorded there.
"""
false_positives = [
    """
    Audit settings change during collector maintenance. Confirm that transmission was
enabled again and that the change matches a ticket.
    """,
]
from = "now-9m"
index = ["logs-vsphere.log-*"]
language = "kuery"
license = "Elastic License v2"
name = "ESXi Audit Records Disabled"
note = """## Triage and analysis

### Investigating ESXi Audit Records Disabled

ESXi audit records capture administrative changes. Turning off local or remote transmission hides the commands that follow, including firewall, account, and VM actions.

#### Possible investigation steps

- Read message to see whether local or remote transmission was disabled.
- Check for a later auditrecords command that sets --enabled true.
- Correlate with syslog reset, firewall changes, and VM shutdowns.

### False positive analysis

A collector outage can include a temporary disable. The setting should be turned back on in the same change.

### Response and remediation

- Re-enable local and remote audit transmission.
- Review shell and hostd logs for commands issued while auditing was off.
- If the disable was unauthorized, isolate the host and rotate credentials.
"""
references = [
    "https://lolesxi-project.github.io/LOLESXi/#",
    "https://blogs.vmware.com/security/2022/10/esxi-targeting-ransomware-tactics-and-techniques-part-2.html",
    "https://detect.fyi/vmware-esxi-logging-detection-opportunities-4fb56411ec21",
]
setup = """## Setup

This rule requires ESXi host logs collected by the Elastic vSphere integration: https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/integrations/vsphere
"""
risk_score = 47
rule_id = "224d0328-36d4-553f-804a-5ff765aa85e5"
severity = "medium"
tags = [
    "Domain: Endpoint",
    "Data Source: VMware vSphere",
    "Use Case: Threat Detection",
    "Tactic: Defense Evasion",
    "Resources: Investigation Guide",
    "Rule Type: Custom Query (KQL)",
    "Platform: VMware ESXi",
]
timestamp_override = "event.ingested"
type = "query"

query = '''
data_stream.dataset:vsphere.log and message:(auditrecords and ("--enabled false" or "--enabled=false" or "local disable" or "remote disable"))
'''

[[rule.threat]]
framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"
[[rule.threat.technique]]
id = "T1562"
name = "Impair Defenses"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/"
[[rule.threat.technique.subtechnique]]
id = "T1562.001"
name = "Disable or Modify Tools"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/001/"

[rule.threat.tactic]
id = "TA0005"
name = "Defense Evasion"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/"

[rule.investigation_fields]
field_names = [
    "@timestamp",
    "message",
    "event.original",
    "host.hostname",
    "log.file.path",
    "host.ip"
]