EXPLORE DETECTIONS
Elastic Agent Service Terminated
Identifies the Elastic endpoint agent has stopped and is no longer running on the host. Adversaries may attempt to disable security monitoring tools in an attempt to evade detection or prevention capabilities during an intrusion. This may also indicate an issue with the agent itself and should be addressed to ensure defensive measures are back in a stable state.
Elastic Defend Alert Followed by Telemetry Loss
Detects when an Elastic Defend endpoint alert is generated on a host and is not followed by any subsequent endpoint telemetry (process, network, registry, library, or DNS events) within a short time window. This behavior may indicate endpoint security evasion, agent tampering, sensor disablement, service termination, system crash, or malicious interference with telemetry collection following detection.
Elastic Defend Alert from GenAI Utility or Descendant
Detects Elastic Defend alerts (behavior, malicious file, memory signature, shellcode) where the alerted process or its direct parent is a GenAI coding or assistant utility (e.g. Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, Cody, Continue, Aider, OpenClaw, Moltbot, Clawdbot, Codeium, Tabnine, GitHub Copilot). Activity from these tools can indicate prompt injection, malicious skills, or supply-chain abuse; this Higher-Order rule helps prioritize such alerts for triage.
Elastic Defend Alert from Package Manager Install Ancestry
Detects Elastic Defend alerts (behavior, malicious file, memory signature, shellcode) where the alerted process has a package-manager install context in its ancestry: npm (Node.js), PyPI (pip / Python / uv), or Rust (cargo). Install-time spawn chains are a common path for supply-chain and postinstall abuse; this Higher-Order rule surfaces Defend alerts whose process tree includes such activity for prioritization.
Elastic Defend and Email Alerts Correlation
This rule correlates any Elastic Defend alert with an email security related alert by target user name. This may indicate the successful execution of a phishing attack.
Elastic Defend and Network Security Alerts Correlation
This rule correlate any Elastic Defend alert with a set of suspicious events from Network security devices like Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and Fortinet Fortigate by host.ip and source.ip. This may indicate that this host is compromised and triggering multi-datasource alerts.
Elastic Security External Alerts
Generates a detection alert for each Elastic Security alert written to the configured indices. Enabling this rule allows you to immediately begin investigating Elastic Security alerts in the app.
Emond Rules Creation or Modification
Identifies the creation or modification of the Event Monitor Daemon (emond) rules. Adversaries may abuse this service by writing a rule to execute commands when a defined event occurs, such as system start up or user authentication.
Enable Host Network Discovery via Netsh
Identifies use of the netsh.exe program to enable host discovery via the network. Attackers can use this command-line tool to weaken the host firewall settings.
Encoded Payload Detected via Defend for Containers
This rule detects the interactive execution of potential defense evasion techniques via encoded payloads inside a container. Attackers may use base64 encoding/decoding to obfuscate data, such as command and control traffic or payloads, to evade detection by host- or network-based security controls.
Encrypting Files with WinRar or 7z
Identifies the use of WinRAR or 7-Zip to create encrypted archives. Adversaries often compress and encrypt data in preparation for exfiltration.
Endpoint Security (Elastic Defend)
Generates a detection alert each time an Elastic Defend alert is received. Enabling this rule allows you to immediately begin investigating your Endpoint alerts.
Entra ID Actor Token User Impersonation Abuse
Identifies potential abuse of actor tokens in Microsoft Entra ID audit logs. Actor tokens are undocumented backend mechanisms used by Microsoft for service-to-service (S2S) operations, allowing services to perform actions on behalf of users. These tokens appear in logs with the service's display name but the impersonated user's UPN. While some legitimate Microsoft operations use actor tokens, unexpected usage may indicate exploitation of CVE-2025-55241, which allowed unauthorized access to Azure AD Graph API across tenants before being patched by Microsoft.
Entra ID ADRS Token Request by Microsoft Authentication Broker
Detects suspicious OAuth 2.0 token requests where the Microsoft Authentication Broker (29d9ed98-a469-4536-ade2-f981bc1d605e) requests access to the Device Registration Service (01cb2876-7ebd-4aa4-9cc9-d28bd4d359a9) on behalf of a user principal. The presence of the adrs_access scope in the authentication processing details suggests an attempt to access ADRS, which is atypical for standard user sign-ins. This behavior may reflect an effort to abuse device registration for unauthorized persistence, such as acquiring a Primary Refresh Token (PRT) or establishing a trusted session.
Entra ID AiTM Phishing-Kit Chain Detected
Identifies a Microsoft Entra ID identity-compromise chain in which a single user, within a 10-minute window, authenticates to the Device Registration Service through the Microsoft Authentication Broker (MAB) client, registers a device, and then uses the resulting Primary Refresh Token (PRT) to access a resource other than the Device Registration Service. This sequence is the core post-adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) persistence pattern used by phishing kits such as Tycoon2FA and Kali365: after capturing a victim session, the kit registers an Azure AD-joined device to obtain a device-bound PRT, which survives user-level session revocation and password resets and grants trusted, MFA-free access. Correlating the broker sign-in, the device-registration audit event, and the follow-on PRT sign-in for the same user within a short window is a high-fidelity indicator of active account takeover.
Entra ID Application Credential Modified
Identifies when a new credential is added to an application in Azure. An application may use a certificate or secret string to prove its identity when requesting a token. Multiple certificates and secrets can be added for an application and an adversary may abuse this by creating an additional authentication method to evade defenses or persist in an environment.
Entra ID Concurrent Sign-in with Suspicious Properties
Identifies concurrent azure signin events for the same user and from multiple sources, and where one of the authentication event has some suspicious properties often associated to DeviceCode and OAuth phishing. Adversaries may steal Refresh Tokens (RTs) via phishing to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) and gain unauthorized access to Azure resources.
Entra ID Conditional Access MFA Bypass with Unusual User, Client and Source ASN
Identifies the first observed instance of a Microsoft first-party public client application acquiring a Microsoft Graph token using single-factor (password-only) authentication while an MFA Conditional Access grant control went unenforced, for a given user, application, and source autonomous system (ASN). This pattern is associated with the Conditional Access "resource exclusion" bypass: when a tenant's "all resources" Conditional Access policy contains at least one application exclusion, Entra ID issues tokens for low-privilege baseline scopes (User.Read, openid, profile, email) to any resource, including Microsoft Graph, without enforcing the policy's grant controls (such as MFA). An adversary holding only a stolen password can therefore obtain a Graph token through a trusted first-party public client (for example, Microsoft Bing Search) and enumerate directory objects, even though the tenant requires MFA. Critically, the overall conditional_access_status is never "failure" for this technique (the sign-in is not blocked); it is reported as "success" or "notApplied" depending on what other policies exist in the tenant, so detections that key on Conditional Access failures will not observe it. The reliable fingerprint is in the per-policy results: a policy whose enforced grant control is MFA reports a result of "notApplied" for this sign-in, meaning the MFA requirement was silently not enforced while the single-factor, password-only sign-in still succeeded.
Entra ID Conditional Access Policy (CAP) Modified
Identifies a modification to a conditional access policy (CAP) in Microsoft Entra ID. Adversaries may modify existing CAPs to loosen access controls and maintain persistence in the environment with a compromised identity or entity.
Entra ID Custom Domain Added or Verified
Detects when a custom domain is added or verified in an Entra ID tenant. Adding and verifying a custom domain are precursor steps to configuring domain federation, which can be abused by adversaries to route authentication through an attacker-controlled identity provider (Golden SAML). In most organizations, custom domains are added infrequently and these events should be investigated to ensure they are part of a legitimate administrative workflow.
Entra ID Device Registration with Phishing Kit Default OS Build
Identifies a Microsoft Entra ID device registration where the recorded cloud device operating system build is "10.0.19045.2006" and the device display name follows the default "DESKTOP-" pattern. This is the frozen default device profile observed when adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing kits such as Tycoon2FA and Kali365 register Azure AD-joined devices after capturing a victim session, in order to acquire a Primary Refresh Token (PRT) and establish persistence. The build is hardcoded by the tooling and it is uncommon for the OS build to match this exact value across an environment of otherwise patched hosts, where a current Windows 10 22H2 device reports a far higher "10.0.19045.<revision>" value.
Entra ID Device Registration with ROADtools Default OS Build
Identifies a Microsoft Entra ID device registration where the recorded cloud device operating system build is "10.0.19041.928" and the device display name follows the default "DESKTOP-" pattern. This combination is the default device profile that ROADtools (roadtx) uses when registering a device, and it is uncommon for the OS build to match the hardcoded value across an environment of otherwise patched hosts. Adversaries register rogue devices in Entra ID to acquire a Primary Refresh Token (PRT), establish persistence, and obtain trusted, programmatic access to the tenant. Because the OS build is a tool default, this is a high-fidelity but evadable indicator; baseline approved provisioning tooling and device naming conventions before relying on it.
Entra ID Device with ROADtools Default OS Build (Entity Analytics)
Identifies the first occurrence of a Microsoft Entra ID device, surfaced through the Entra ID Entity Analytics device inventory, whose host name follows the default "DESKTOP-" pattern and whose operating system build is `10.0.19041.928`. This combination is the default device profile that ROADtools (roadtx) uses when registering a device, and the OS build typically differs from the patched OS versions of legitimate hosts in the environment. Adversaries register rogue devices in Entra ID to acquire a Primary Refresh Token (PRT), establish persistence, and obtain trusted, programmatic access to the tenant. Because the OS build is a tool default, this is a high-fidelity but evadable indicator; baseline approved device builds and naming conventions before relying on it.
Entra ID Domain Federation Configuration Change
Detects when domain federation settings are configured or modified in an Entra ID tenant via the Microsoft Graph API. Adversaries with Global Administrator or Domain Administrator privileges may add a custom domain, verify ownership, and configure it to federate authentication with an attacker-controlled identity provider. Once federated, the adversary can forge SAML or WS-Federation tokens to authenticate as any user under that domain, bypassing MFA and conditional access policies. This technique, commonly known as Golden SAML, was used by UNC2452 (APT29) during the SolarWinds campaign for persistent, stealthy access to victim tenants.