Detection: Splunk Account Discovery Drilldown Dashboard Disclosure

EXPERIMENTAL DETECTION

This detection status is set to experimental. The Splunk Threat Research team has not yet fully tested, simulated, or built comprehensive datasets for this detection. As such, this analytic is not officially supported. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us at research@splunk.com.

Description

The following analytic identifies the presence of environment variables in Splunk dashboard drilldown URLs. It uses the REST API to query dashboards for specific patterns in the XML data. This activity is significant because it can expose sensitive tokens from privileged users if an attacker shares a malicious dashboard. If confirmed malicious, this could allow an attacker to detokenize variables and potentially gain unauthorized access to sensitive information or escalate privileges within the Splunk environment.

1
2| rest splunk_server=local /servicesNS/-/-/data/ui/views 
3| search eai:data="*$env:*" eai:data="*url*" eai:data="*options*" 
4| rename author AS Author eai:acl.sharing AS Permissions eai:appName AS App eai:data AS "Dashboard XML" 
5| fields Author Permissions App "Dashboard XML" 
6| `splunk_account_discovery_drilldown_dashboard_disclosure_filter`

Data Source

Name Platform Sourcetype Source Supported App
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Macros Used

Name Value

| splunk_account_discovery_drilldown_dashboard_disclosure_filter | search * |

splunk_account_discovery_drilldown_dashboard_disclosure_filter is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Annotations

- MITRE ATT&CK
+ Kill Chain Phases
+ NIST
+ CIS
- Threat Actors
ID Technique Tactic
T1087 Account Discovery Discovery
KillChainPhase.EXPLOITAITON
NistCategory.DE_CM
Cis18Value.CIS_10
FIN13

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Setting Value
Disabled true
Cron Schedule 0 * * * *
Earliest Time -70m@m
Latest Time -10m@m
Schedule Window auto
Creates Notable Yes
Rule Title %name%
Rule Description %description%
Notable Event Fields user, dest
Creates Risk Event True
This configuration file applies to all detections of type TTP. These detections will use Risk Based Alerting and generate Notable Events.

Implementation

This search uses REST function to query for dashboards with environment variables present in URL options.

Known False Positives

This search may reveal non malicious URLs with environment variables used in organizations.

Associated Analytic Story

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Risk Message Risk Score Impact Confidence
Potential exposure of environment variables from url embedded in dashboard 40 50 80
The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

References

Detection Testing

Test Type Status Dataset Source Sourcetype
Validation Not Applicable N/A N/A N/A
Unit ❌ Failing N/A N/A N/A
Integration ❌ Failing N/A N/A N/A

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range


Source: GitHub | Version: 2