Detection: Kubernetes Scanning by Unauthenticated IP Address

Description

The following analytic identifies potential scanning activities within a Kubernetes environment by unauthenticated IP addresses. It leverages Kubernetes audit logs to detect multiple unauthorized access attempts (HTTP 403 responses) from the same source IP. This activity is significant as it may indicate an attacker probing for vulnerabilities or attempting to exploit known issues. If confirmed malicious, such scanning could lead to unauthorized access, data breaches, or further exploitation of the Kubernetes infrastructure, compromising the security and integrity of the environment.

Search

1`kube_audit` "user.groups{}"="system:unauthenticated" "responseStatus.code"=403 
2| iplocation sourceIPs{} 
3| stats count values(userAgent) as userAgent values(user.username) as user.username values(user.groups{}) as user.groups{} values(verb) as verb values(requestURI) as requestURI values(responseStatus.code) as responseStatus.code values(responseStatus.message) as responseStatus.message values(responseStatus.reason) as responseStatus.reason values(responseStatus.status) as responseStatus.status by sourceIPs{} Country City 
4| where count > 5 
5| rename sourceIPs{} as src_ip, user.username as user 
6| `kubernetes_scanning_by_unauthenticated_ip_address_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source	Supported App
Kubernetes Audit	Kubernetes	'_json'	'kubernetes'	N/A

Macros Used

Annotations

Default Configuration

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

Implementation

The detection is based on data that originates from Kubernetes Audit logs. Ensure that audit logging is enabled in your Kubernetes cluster. Kubernetes audit logs provide a record of the requests made to the Kubernetes API server, which is crucial for monitoring and detecting suspicious activities. Configure the audit policy in Kubernetes to determine what kind of activities are logged. This is done by creating an Audit Policy and providing it to the API server. Use the Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector for Kubernetes to collect the logs. This doc will describe how to collect the audit log file https://github.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector-chart/blob/main/docs/migration-from-sck.md. When you want to use this detection with AWS EKS, you need to enable EKS control plane logging https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/control-plane-logs.html. Then you can collect the logs from Cloudwatch using the AWS TA https://splunk.github.io/splunk-add-on-for-amazon-web-services/CloudWatchLogs/.

Known False Positives

unknown

Associated Analytic Story

• Kubernetes Security

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

References

• https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug/debug-cluster/audit/

Detection Testing

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