FortiGate Super Admin Account Creation

Last updated 6 days ago on 2026-01-28

Created 6 days ago on 2026-01-28

About

This rule detects the creation of an administrator account on a FortiGate device. Administrator account creation on these devices should be infrequent and tightly controlled. In the FG-IR-26-060 campaign, threat actors created super_admin accounts immediately after gaining initial access via FortiCloud SSO bypass to establish persistence.

Tags

Use Case: Threat DetectionTactic: PersistenceDomain: NetworkDomain: IdentityData Source: FortinetData Source: Fortinet FortiGateLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Persistence (TA0003)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Create Account (T1136)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

License

Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type: Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: logs-fortinet_fortigate.*
Related Integrations: fortinet_fortigate(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗any where event.dataset == "fortinet_fortigate.log" and
    event.code == "0100044547" and
    fortinet.firewall.cfgpath == "system.admin" and
    fortinet.firewall.action == "Add" and
    fortinet.firewall.cfgattr like~ "*accprofile[super_admin]*"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect FortiGate Super Admin Account Creation 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(external, opens in a new tab or window).