Azure AD Health Service Agents Registry Keys Access

This detection uses Windows security events to detect suspicious access attempts to the registry key values and sub-keys of Azure AD Health service agents (e.g AD FS). Information from AD Health service agents can be used to potentially abuse some of the features provided by those services in the cloud (e.g. Federation). This detection requires an access control entry (ACE) on the system access control list (SACL) of the following securable object: HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ADHealthAgent. Make sure you set the SACL to propagate to its sub-keys.

Sigma rule (View on GitHub)

 1title: Azure AD Health Service Agents Registry Keys Access
 2id: 1d2ab8ac-1a01-423b-9c39-001510eae8e8
 3status: test
 4description: |
 5    This detection uses Windows security events to detect suspicious access attempts to the registry key values and sub-keys of Azure AD Health service agents (e.g AD FS).
 6    Information from AD Health service agents can be used to potentially abuse some of the features provided by those services in the cloud (e.g. Federation).
 7    This detection requires an access control entry (ACE) on the system access control list (SACL) of the following securable object: HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ADHealthAgent.
 8    Make sure you set the SACL to propagate to its sub-keys.    
 9references:
10    - https://o365blog.com/post/hybridhealthagent/
11    - https://github.com/OTRF/Set-AuditRule/blob/c3dec5443414231714d850565d364ca73475ade5/rules/registry/aad_connect_health_service_agent.yml
12author: Roberto Rodriguez (Cyb3rWard0g), OTR (Open Threat Research), MSTIC
13date: 2021/08/26
14modified: 2022/10/09
15tags:
16    - attack.discovery
17    - attack.t1012
18logsource:
19    product: windows
20    service: security
21detection:
22    selection:
23        EventID:
24            - 4656
25            - 4663
26        ObjectType: 'Key'
27        ObjectName: '\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ADHealthAgent'
28    filter:
29        ProcessName|contains:
30            - 'Microsoft.Identity.Health.Adfs.DiagnosticsAgent.exe'
31            - 'Microsoft.Identity.Health.Adfs.InsightsService.exe'
32            - 'Microsoft.Identity.Health.Adfs.MonitoringAgent.Startup.exe'
33            - 'Microsoft.Identity.Health.Adfs.PshSurrogate.exe'
34            - 'Microsoft.Identity.Health.Common.Clients.ResourceMonitor.exe'
35    condition: selection and not filter
36falsepositives:
37    - Unknown
38level: medium

References

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