EventSentry 5.1.1.104: Security, Security, Security!

Everybody wants to have a more secure network – and everybody has various tools at their disposal to at least improve the security of their network. But which tool is the best for the job, and where do you start? The answer to this question is somewhat easier (and more structured) for organizations that have to adhere to compliance frameworks (ISO, CMMC, PCI, SOC, …), but a little harder for business that have no such requirements.

EventSentry has long included many tools to increase the security of your network, and in the latest 5.1.1.104 update we made it significantly easier to increase the security of your infrastructure with 3 new dashboards:

The security dashboards will guide you through the process of:

  • Ensuring your audit settings are correct
  • Identifying insecure settings on your network
  • Illustrating significant changes that should be reviewed

So how do you get started? After applying the latest patch, head over to the web reports and load any dashboard and hit the SPACE bar – the new security dashboards will show up in the list and you can import them there.

After the dashboards are imported, click on the Dashboard in the menu and select the first one: “Dashboard [1] Foundation”. This dashboard simply evaluates all of your audit policies to make sure they are adequate. Proper auditing is crucial, and is the foundation for many other monitoring initiatives.

Important: You can click on the header of each imported dashboard to navigate to a KB article, which explains the purpose of the dashboard in detail and how to resolve any identified issues.

It’s recommended to configure audit settings via group policy, to ensure that settings are always enforced and apply network-wide. You will know that your audit settings are correct when all tiles on this dashboard are “OK”. Please keep in mind that it may take an hour before new audit settings are pushed by GPO to your end points and subsequently picked up by EventSentry. Detailed information about this dashboard is available here.

Once your audit settings are in the clear you can graduate to dashboard #2 – Attack Surface. This dashboard utilizes various validation scripts to ensure that your monitored hosts follow best practices and/or pass security and compliance requirements. The checks are generally divided into different categories like

  • Best Practices
  • Security
  • Privacy
  • CIS Critical Security Controls

Most findings on this dashboard can usually be resolved via group policy and/or registry settings. The end result is a reduced attack surface of your network since your monitored hosts will now adhere to recommended best practices and security recommendations. More information about this dashboard can be found here.

The last dashboard, “Security [3] Critical Changes” illustrates critical changes that have occurred on your network (and domain) recently. This dashboard should be reviewed daily and will reveal important changes like

  • Services/Drives/Scheduled Tasks added
  • Software Installed
  • Recent logon failures
  • Important AD changes

Patch 104 also includes improvements to the names of built-in event log packages, which have been consolidated and given better, more descriptive names. As such, expect a lot of changes if you do a package update in the management console.

Another useful improvement is that you can now easily access information about security events with a new “info” button in the management console.

If you’re running EventSentry 5.1 then download the latest patch and make sure to install & review the new security dashboards!

Auditing DNS Server Changes on Windows 2008/2008R2/2012 with EventSentry

In part one of this blog series we showed how to monitor DNS audit logs in Windows 2012 R2 and higher with EventSentry.

Before I continue I need to point out that DNS auditing has become significantly easier starting with Windows 2012 R2. Not only is it enabled by default, but the generated audit data is also much more granular and easier to interpret. The logged events even distinguish between regular and dynamic updates, making it easy to filter out noise. So if you’re serious about DNS auditing and have the option to update then I recommend you do so.

If you’re running Windows 2008 (R2) or 2012 then setting up DNS auditing requires a few steps. Thankfully it’s a one-time process and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. On the EventSentry side a pre-built package with all the necessary rules is available for download and included with the latest installer.

Please follow the steps outlined below exactly as described, auditing won’t work or will be incomplete if these steps aren’t followed exactly as described below.

Enabling Directory Service Auditing

Enabling Sub Category Auditing

We first need to make sure that the new subcategory-based audit settings are enabled in group policy. If you’ve already done that, then you can skip this step and jump to “ADSIEdit”.

Since most of the steps here involve domain controllers, I recommend that you make the changes in a group policy, e.g. in the “Default Domain Controller” policy. In Group Policy Management, find an existing group policy, or create a new one, and set Computer Configuration\Polices\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Polices\Security Options\Force audit policy subcategory settings (Windows Vista or later) to override audit policy category settings to Enabled.

Then, navigate to Computer Configuration\Polices\Windows Settings\Advanced Audit Policy Configuration\Audit Policies\DS Access and set Audit Directory Service Changes to Success.

ADSI Edit

Open ADSI Edit via Start -> Run -> “adsiedit.msc”. If your default naming context does not automatically appear OR if the listed naming context does not include dc=domaindnszones, then select “Action -> Connect To” and connect to the appropriate naming context, e.g.

dc=domaindnszones,dc=yourdomain,dc=com

Replace the dc components after “domaindnszones” with the actual DNS name of your domain. It’s important that “dc=domaindnszones” is part of the naming context.

Once connected, expand the naming context and locate the “CN=MicrosoftDNS” container, right-click it, and select Properties. Then select Security, Advanced, Auditing and click on Add. In the resulting dialog we’ll audit the built-in “Everyone” user so that DNS changes from everyone are audited:

Name (Principal): Everyone
Apply onto:       This object and all descendent objects
Access:           Create dnsZone objects

 

Enabling auditing with ADSI Edit (1)

It may seem tempting to also check the “Delete dnsZone objects”, but resist the temptation. Don’t be fooled by the term “dnsZone”, the ACE entry we just added will audit the creation of all AD DNS objects (and not just DNS zones) and log event 5136 to the security event log. In order to audit deletions as well, click “Add” again but this time configure the dialog as shown below:

Name (Principal): Everyone
Apply onto:       Descendent dnsZone objects
Access:           Delete

Enabling auditing with ADSI Edit (2)

It’s important that the “Apply onto” is changed to Descendent dnsZone objects. This ACE entry will result in event 5141 being logged when a DNS-related directory service object is deleted. This is were things get a bit interesting though, since DNS records deleted from the DNS manager aren’t actually deleted. Instead, they are tombstoned (which is done internally by adding the dNSTombstoned attribute to the object). Only when the tombstoned object expires is it actually deleted. You can use ADSIEdit if you want to send a DNS object immediately to heaven and skip the graveyard stage.

Unlike Windows 2012 R2 and later, earlier versions of Windows are a little more verbose than you probably like when it comes to directory service auditing. For example, creating a new DNS A record in a zone will result in 4 different events with id 5136 being logged – and not just one. The events logged when adding or deleting a zone or A record are shown in the diagram below:

Directory Service Changes events

All events are logged under the “Directory Service Changes” category.

Testing

Before we start configuring EventSentry, we’ll want to make sure that auditing was setup correctly. On a domain controller, open the “DNS” application and either temporarily add a new A record or primary zone. You should either see a 5136 or 5137 events with the category “Directory Service Changes” logged to the security event log.

If you don’t see the events then walk through the above steps again, or reference this Microsoft article.

Configuring EventSentry

There are generally two things one will want to do with these audit events – store them in a database, email them or both. If you’re already consolidating Audit Success events in an EventSentry database then you shouldn’t have to do anything, all directory service change events will be written to the database automagically.

Database

If you only want to store directory service change events in the database (opposed to storing all audit success events), then you can simply create an include filter with the following properties:

Log:      Security
Severity: Audit Success
Source:   Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing
Category: Directory Service Changes

… and assign your database action to it.

Alerts

Setting up alerts using filters for when zones or records are added or removed is a little more involved than one would hope, thanks to Windows logging more than one event whenever such a change is done – as is depicted in the image above. For example, creating a new DNS record will result in 4 x 5136 events being logged, deleting will result in 3 events.

Lucky for you, we’ve analyzed the events and created a DNS Server Auditing package in EventSentry which will email you a single alert (=event) whenever a record or zone are added or removed. This package is included with all new installation of EventSentry, existing users running 3.4 or later can get it through the package update feature in the management console.

DNS Server Auditing Package
DNS Server Auditing Package

And that’s really all there is to it … if you have EventSentry installed then setting up auditing in Windows is really the only obstacle to auditing your DNS records!

EventSentry v3.4: New Security Features, Software Version Checker, Better Performance & more!

We’re again excited to announce the availability of EventSentry v3.4, the latest release of our hybrid SIEM monitoring suite.

EventSentry v3.4 delivers a number of new features to

  • Protect yourself against ransomware attacks
  • Detect lateral movement on a network with collector thresholds
  • Identify outdated software on your network
  • View detailed bandwidth utilization (requires NetFlow)
  • Monitor attached UPS devices
  • Integrate with open source solutions (Graylog, ELK, Nagios Log Server & others)

and more. We’ve also been focusing on making the data EventSentry collects more actionable and subsequently more helpful, and as result you will see additional contextual data provided with some alerts & reports, and one new search page in EventSentry.

All in all, this upcoming release has a lot of improvements in store to help you do your job better by ensuring that your network is as reliable, secure and fast as possible.

Audit Subcategories with audit success enabled, grouped by host

Ransomware

While high-profile Ransomware attacks have slowed down somewhat in recent weeks, businesses – especially small businesses – are still hit with Ransomware infections every day. Even though EventSentry is not positioned as a AV or a AntiMalware software, it does include a variety of functionality which can detect Ransomware outbreaks.

What sets EventSentry apart from AV and most AntiMalware solutions is that it looks for pattern exhibited by the Ransomware – regardless of the variant. What’s new in version v3.4 is the ability to detect changes to the MBR and bootsector as well as the ability to calculate the entropy of (changed) files.

MBR/BootSector Monitoring & Backup
Some more recent Ransomware variants modify the MBR and/or boot sector and trigger a reboot to initiate an offline encryption process. EventSentry v3.4 can now monitor the MBR and detect changes in near real-time to alert the admin when suspicious activity is occurring.

By utilizing EventSentry’s advanced filtering engine it is also possible to potentially stop the encryption process, e.g. by hibernating the infected host. EventSentry even backs up the MBR and boot sector, making it possible to repair an infected system (with a boot disk) without having to perform a full restore from backup.

MBR & Bootloader Backup

File Entropy
Entropy describes the randomness of a file, essentially a metric that can help detect compressed and encrypted files.

Since most Ransomware encrypts large amounts of files, EventSentry can utilize the entropy of a file, combined with event log thresholds, to make a determination that a Ransomware infection is in progress and take corrective measures.

Lateral Movement Detection with Thresholds

Lateral Network Movement
Lateral movement through a network

EventSentry has always included agent-side thresholds in order to throttle the alert volume or detect repeated events. Because these thresholds were executed on the agents, event patterns which involved more than one host could not be detected that way.

By adding a threshold component to collector – which analyzes and processes all events in real time – we can leverage this feature to new heights and detect network-wide event-based patterns – in real time!

Collector-side thresholds are configured exactly like agent-side thresholds with one the key difference – the threshold limit applies to all aggregated events sent to the collector. Collector-side thresholds also introduce the “Group By” setting that makes the lateral movement detection possible – the ability to count unique instances of an event property, and not just the total number of events.

 

 

Some of the event-based threat patterns you can detect:

  • The same user logging on to multiple hosts within a specific time frame
  • A process spreading (trickling) across multiple hosts within a specific time frame
  • A user running too many processes – either on a single or multiple hosts
  • Authentication failures of a user on too many hosts
  • Too many unique logon types used by a user account

Any event property and insertion string can be used to craft thresholds – the sky is the limit.

Software Version Checker

Earlier versions of EventSentry include a substantial hardware, software and patch inventory, making it extremely easy to find out which software packages are installed on your network, but also get alerted when software is installed or removed from a server/workstation.

In v3.4 we are taking this to the next level by providing the latest version available from the publisher for a growing list of 100+ software packages so that you can effortlessly identify outdated software on your network. You can now create reports listing any software on your network which is outdated, a dashboard tile is also available. The Web Reports refresh the version info list every 2 hours to ensure all reports are accurate.

If an application you are using on your network is not currently included then simply email us the name of the software as it is detected by EventSentry (and ideally the URL where we can obtain the current version) and we will add it to our list.

Software Version Check Report

64-bit Web Reports for Windows

The EventSentry web reports are now available as a 64-bit application, and upgrading to v3.4 will automatically upgrade the existing v3.x 32-bit web reports to 64-bit on 64-bit when installed/upgraded on a 64-bit version of Windows. The new 64-bit web reports will allow you to run larger reports that would not run due to limits with the address space associated with 32-bit applications.

UPS & Battery Monitoring

Any UPS directly attached to a server/workstations that is detected by Windows can now be monitored by EventSentry. The status of the UPS will show up on the host inventory page, and alerts will be generated when a host is on battery power and back on AC power. EventSentry can also initiate a shutdown when the remaining run-time or charge level falls below a certain limit.

UPS Alert

Batteries in laptops are also detected and listed on the host inventory page (battery capacity and current charge level), but generated alerts are informational only.

UPS Inventory & Monitoring

User Activity Tracking

While EventSentry provides its users with a wealth of information from multiple angles, it can be tedious to piece together data from multiple reports that is associated with a specific user. Data which can be linked to a user is scattered among process tracking, file access tracking, compliance logons and other pages.

User activity tracking

The new “User Activity” page, which is located in the “Dashboard” menu, solves this problem by displaying data from the following pages on a single page:

  • Logons
  • Processes
  • File Access
  • Active Directory Changes
  • Tasks
  • Events

The user activity page makes seeing all activity by a user as easy as never before!

Integration with third-party log management solutions

A few months ago, one of our users approached with the need to integrate EventSentry into an existing log management system which was already in place at the location where EventSentry was to be deployed. While reviewing the request we recognized that even though we position EventSentry as a one-stop log management solution with a compelling and robust web-based reporting component, an integration with other products can be helpful in some cases.

  • Supplement EventSentry’s built-in reporting with additional reporting
  • Integrate EventSentry with an existing log management solution located in a different business unit
  • Integrate EventSentry’s sophisticated real-time agent and deployment infrastructure with a different log management back-end

In version 3.3 and earlier, EventSentry can be integrated with 3rd party products using the HTTP, process and Syslog action. The HTTP & process action are intended to be used with ticketing systems where only a low volume of alerts are submitted while the Syslog action obviously supports submitting a high volume of events. The Syslog format was however limited to the traditional RFC 3164 format, making an integration with other log management systems difficult.

Starting with version 3.4, EventSentry now supports the following formats in the Syslog action

  1. RFC 3164 (legacy)
  2. Snare
  3. RFC 5424
  4. GELF (Graylog)
  5. Nagios Log Server
  6. Common Event Format (CEF)
  7. JSON (customizable)

If a log management server you need to integrate with is not listed above but supports the JSON format, then you can craft your own JSON packet with the JSON format, also introduced in v3.4.

Disk Space Alerts

Part of the effort to make EventSentry’s alerts more actionable is reflected in our improved disk space alerts which now list the 15 largest files and folders of the volume where disk space is low. The supplemental data will in many cases be enough to immediately identify the culprit so that corrective action can be taken immediately, without the need to run disk space analyzers on the volume.

Diskspace Alert with embedded file/folder size info

Audit Policy Status

Since the introduction of the compliance tracking components, EventSentry has been recording all audit (and many other!) changes performed in Windows as part of the “Policy Changes” feature. It wasn’t however possible to see the current status of all audit categories and subcategories at a glance. Reviewing the current audit status of all monitored hosts can be important however, if only to verify that group policies are configured correctly.

Hosts with disabled audit subcategories
Hosts with disabled audit subcategories

In v3.4 we now have the new “Status” page available under “Compliance -> Audit Policy” which delivers information such as:

  • Compare/review audit settings of a particular sub category (e.g. “Registry”) among all monitored hosts
  • View all disabled audit settings across all or select hosts
  • (Re)view audit settings based on computer types (e.g. domain controllers, servers, workstations)

NetFlow Bandwidth

Our NetFlow component can now provide bandwidth visualization based on the collected NetFlow data. The information can either be accessed on the NetFlow page or as a dashboard tile. Even though bandwidth data can already be determined using SNMP, the data gathered by NetFlow should be preferred since it contains additional data not available via SNMP, such as:

  • Packets sent/received
  • Bytes sent/received
  • Bytes per packet
  • % Utilization

Bytes per packet as well as packets sent received can be used to detect anomalies, e.g. when a host sends a large amount of network packets, or network packets with large/small content.

NetFlow Bandwidth

Auditing DNS Server Changes on Windows 2012 R2 and later with EventSentry

Auditing changes on Microsoft Windows DNS server is a common requirement and question, but it’s not immediately obvious which versions of Windows support DNS Auditing, how it’s enabled, and where the audit data (and what data) is available. Fortunately Microsoft has greatly simplified DNS Server auditing with the release of Windows Server 2012 R2.

In this post we’ll show how to enable DNS Auditing on 2012 R2 and later, and how to configure EventSentry to collect those audit events. In a future post we’ll also show how to do the same with older versions of Windows – 2008, 2008 R2 & 2012.

When configuration is finished you are going to be able to see when a zone/record is created/modified/deleted as well as by whom. The audit data will be available (and searchable) in the EventSentry Web Reports, and you’ll also be able to setup email alerts when some or all DNS entries are changed.

Prerequisites

Since native DNS auditing was only introduced with Windows 2012 R2 or later you’ll need to run at least Windows Server 2012 R2 in order to follow this guide. The table below shows the types of DNS auditing available on Windows Server Operating Systems:

Windows OS Auditing Type Comments
Windows 2008 Active Directory – based auditing only
Windows 2008 R2 Active Directory – based auditing only
Windows 2012 Active Directory – based auditing only
Windows 2012 R2 Native DNS Auditing Available with hotfix 2956577
(automatically applied via windows update!)
Windows 2016 Native DNS Auditing enabled by default
Windows 2019 Native DNS Auditing enabled by default
Windows 2022 Native DNS Auditing enabled by default

Configuration

Enhanced DNS logging and diagnostics are enabled by default in supported versions of Windows Server when the “DNS Server” role has been added to Windows, so there are no additional configuration steps that need to be done.

1. Package Creation

On the EventSentry machine we are going to add a package under Packages/Event Logs by right-clicking “Event Logs” and selecting “Add Package”. In this example we are going to call the package “Windows Server 2016”:

Package Creation
Package Creation

2. Adding a Filter

The next step is to add a filter to the previously created package “Windows Server 2016”. Right click the package and then select “Add Filter”.

Adding a DNS Audit filter
Adding the DNS Audit filter

Note: For a short tutorial on how to create a filter click here.

3. Filter Configuration

There are several ways to approach the filter configuration depending on your needs. As a reminder, a filter is a rule in EventSentry that determines to where an event is forwarded to, or how it is processed.

  1. Collect all or select (e.g. creation only) DNS audit data in the database
  2. Email alert on select audit data (e.g. email all deletions)
  3. Email alert on all activity from a specific user

In this guide we will show how to accomplish (1) and (2) as a bonus.

On the right pane of the management console after the creation of the filter you will see the General tab of the new filter. We decided to configure it to log to the Primary Database, but the events can be sent to any action (Email, Syslog, …).

Under “Event Severity” we check all boxes since we want to log everything (it’s important to check “Information” since most of the creation/deletions/etc are logged at this level of severity).

Editing the DNS Audit filter
Editing the DNS Audit filter

4. Adding a custom event log

In the “Log” section click on “more” to jump to the “Custom Event Logs” tab (or, just click on that tab). Now we need to add the Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer/Audit event log to the list of custom event logs so that this filter picks up events from the DNS Audit event log. Click the save button in EventSentry Management Console title bar to save the changes we’ve made so far.

Adding an Application & Services event log
Adding an Application & Services event log

5a. Assigning the package (method A – manual assignment)

To assign the package, select the server you would like to assign it to and select “Assign Packages”. In the resulting dialog simply check the box next to the package we created in step 1. Alternatively you can also select the package and click “Assign” from the ribbon (or context menu) and select a group or host(s) to assign the package to.

Assigning a package
Assigning a package

5b. Assign the package (method B – dynamic activation)

Instead of assigning the package manually, the package can be assigned dynamically so that any host monitored by EventSentry running Windows Server 2012 R2 or later will automatically have this package assigned. To dynamically assign a package do the following:

  • Click the package and select “Properties” from the ribbon, or right-click.
  • In the “Dynamic Activation” section, check “Automatically activate …”
  • In the “Installed Services” field enter “DNS”
  • For the “Operating System”, select “at least” and “Windows 2012 R2”
  • Click the “Global” icon in the ribbon to make sure the package gets assigned to all hosts. Don’t worry, it will still only be activated on 2012 R2 or later hosts that have the DNS server running

6. Saving

After assigning the package and saving the configuration click “Save & Deploy” or push the configuration to all remote hosts. Please note that only new events generated in the DNS Audit Log will be processed, pre-existing log entries will be ignored.

Testing the Configuration

To test the configuration we will create a domain called “testzone.com” and add an A record called www on the monitored DNS server. We’ll then check if those modifications are visible in the EventSentry Web Reports. The screenshot below shows the new A record in the DNS console:

testzone.com with the new A record "www"
testzone.com with the new A record “www”

First, lets take a look to see what the actual DNS Audit entries look like (using the Windows Event Viewer: Applications and Services Logs/Microsoft/Windows/DNS-Server/Audit):

DNS Server Audit Event Log
DNS Server Audit Event Log

In the EventSentry Web Reports, navigate to Logs/Event Log and filter by the log “Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer” and then select “Detailed”. You should see all the modifications that were performed:

Detailed audit log in the web reports
Detailed audit log in the web reports

Bonus Track: Configuring alerts for a specific change

The first part of this post was purposely generic in order to understand the basics of monitoring your DNS Server. But as a bonus we’ll show how to monitor a specific change (in this case a creation) and trigger an email alert for that.

The process is the same as explained in the beginning:

  1. Create a new filter and add it to the same package. The filter should be configured exactly the same way. To make things easier, you can also copy & paste the filter with the familiar Copy/Paste buttons in the ribbon or context menu.
  2. This time however we specify the “Default Email” action in “General” tab so that we receive an email alert when the filter criteria matches an event.
  3. In the “Details” area specify event id 515 in the “Event ID” field, which is the event id corresponding to the creation of a new record. This is how the filter would look like:

Filter for receiving an alert on record creation

Filters can of course be more specific as well, it’s possible to filter based on the user or event content of the actual event. Below is a list of all audit events logged by the DNS Server:

Event ID Type Event ID Type
512 Zone added 551 Clear statistics
513 Zone delete 552 Start scavenging
514 Zone updated 553 Enlist directory partition
515 Record create 554 Abort scavenging
516 Record delete 555 Prepare for demotion
517 RRSET delete 556 Write root hints
518 Node delete 557 Listen address
519 Record create – dynamic update 558 Active refresh trust points
520 Record delete – dynamic update 559 Pause zone
521 Record scavenge 560 Resume zone
522 Zone scope create 561 Reload zone
523 Zone scope delete 562 Refresh zone
525 Zone sign 563 Expire zone
526 Zone unsign 564 Update from DS
527 Zone re-sign 565 Write and notify
528 Key rollover start 566 Force aging
529 Key rollover end 567 Scavenge servers
530 Key retire 568 Transfer key master
531 Key rollover triggered 569 Add SKD
533 Key poke rollover 570 Modify SKD
534 Export DNSSEC 571 Delete SKD
535 Import DNSSEC 572 Modify SKD state
536 Cache purge 573 Add delegation
537 Forwarder reset 574 Create client subnet record
540 Root hints 575 Delete client subnet record
541 Server setting 576 Update client subnet record
542 Server scope create 577 Create server level policy
543 Server scope delete 578 Create zone level policy
544 Add trust point DNSKEY 579 Create forwarding policy
545 Add trust point DS 580 Delete server level policy
546 Remove trust point 581 delete zone level policy
547 Add trust point root 582 Delete forwarding policy
548 Restart server
549 Clear debug logs
550 Write dirty zones

We hope that DNS changes will never remain a mystery after activating DNS auditing. Don’t fear if you’re running 2012 or earlier, the next post is on its way.

Mariano + Ingmar.