O365 Mailbox Audit Logging Bypass

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-01-15
Created 3 years ago on 2022-01-13

About

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.
Tags
Domain: CloudData Source: Microsoft 365Tactic: Initial AccessTactic: Defense EvasionLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
Legitimate allowlisting of noisy accounts
License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
filebeat-*logs-o365*
Related Integrations

o365(opens in a new tab or window)

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

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect O365 Mailbox Audit Logging Bypass in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).