Service Creation via Local Kerberos Authentication

Last updated 5 days ago on 2025-06-19
Created 3 years ago on 2022-04-27

About

Identifies a suspicious local successful logon event where the Logon Package is Kerberos, the remote address is set to localhost, followed by a sevice creation from the same LogonId. This may indicate an attempt to leverage a Kerberos relay attack variant that can be used to elevate privilege locally from a domain joined user to local System privileges.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationTactic: Credential AccessUse Case: Active Directory MonitoringData Source: Active DirectoryData Source: Windows Security Event LogsLanguage: eql
Severity
high
Risk Score
73
MITRE ATT&CK™

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(opens in a new tab or window)

Credential Access (TA0006)(opens in a new tab or window)

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

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-system.security*logs-windows.forwarded*winlogbeat-*
Related Integrations

system(opens in a new tab or window)

windows(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
sequence by winlog.computer_name with maxspan=5m
 [authentication where

  /* event 4624 need to be logged */
  event.action == "logged-in" and event.outcome == "success" and winlog.event_data.ElevatedToken == "%%1843" and process.pid == 0 and 

  /* authenticate locally using relayed kerberos Ticket */
  winlog.event_data.AuthenticationPackageName :"Kerberos" and winlog.logon.type == "Network" and cidrmatch(source.ip, "127.0.0.0/8", "::1")] by winlog.event_data.TargetLogonId

  [any where
   /* event 4697 need to be logged */
   event.action : "service-installed"] by winlog.event_data.SubjectLogonId

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Service Creation via Local Kerberos Authentication 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).