Detection rules › Splunk

ASL AWS ECR Container Upload Outside Business Hours

Status
production
Severity
low
Group by
"actor.user.account.uid", "actor.user.uid", "api.operation", "api.request.data", "api.service.name", "cloud.provider", "cloud.region", "http_request.user_agent", "src_endpoint.ip", bucketName
Author
Patrick Bareiss, Splunk
Source
github.com/splunk/security_content

The following analytic detects the upload of new containers to AWS Elastic Container Service (ECR) outside of standard business hours through AWS CloudTrail events. It identifies this behavior by monitoring for PutImage events occurring before 8 AM or after 8 PM, as well as any uploads on weekends. This activity is significant for a SOC to investigate as it may indicate unauthorized access or malicious deployments, potentially leading to compromised services or data breaches. Identifying and addressing such uploads promptly can mitigate the risk of security incidents and their associated impacts.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Rules detecting the same action

Other rules on this platform that filter on the same API call or operation.

Rule body splunk

name: ASL AWS ECR Container Upload Outside Business Hours
id: 739ed682-27e9-4ba0-80e5-a91b97698213
version: 12
creation_date: '2024-05-22'
modification_date: '2026-05-13'
author: Patrick Bareiss, Splunk
status: production
type: Anomaly
description: The following analytic detects the upload of new containers to AWS Elastic Container Service (ECR) outside of standard business hours through AWS CloudTrail events. It identifies this behavior by monitoring for `PutImage` events occurring before 8 AM or after 8 PM, as well as any uploads on weekends. This activity is significant for a SOC to investigate as it may indicate unauthorized access or malicious deployments, potentially leading to compromised services or data breaches. Identifying and addressing such uploads promptly can mitigate the risk of security incidents and their associated impacts.
data_source:
    - ASL AWS CloudTrail
search: |-
    `amazon_security_lake` api.operation=PutImage
      | eval hour=strftime(time/pow(10,3), "%H"), weekday=strftime(time/pow(10,3), "%A")
      | where hour >= 20 OR hour < 8 OR weekday=Saturday OR weekday=Sunday
      | fillnull
      | stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime
        BY actor.user.uid api.operation api.service.name
           http_request.user_agent src_endpoint.ip actor.user.account.uid
           cloud.provider cloud.region api.request.data
           bucketName
      | rename actor.user.uid as user api.operation as action api.service.name as dest http_request.user_agent as user_agent src_endpoint.ip as src actor.user.account.uid as vendor_account cloud.provider as vendor_product cloud.region as vendor_region
      | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
      | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
      | `asl_aws_ecr_container_upload_outside_business_hours_filter`
how_to_implement: The detection is based on Amazon Security Lake events from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is a centralized data lake that provides security-related data from AWS services. To use this detection, you must ingest CloudTrail logs from Amazon Security Lake into Splunk. To run this search, ensure that you ingest events using the latest version of Splunk Add-on for Amazon Web Services (https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/1876) or the Federated Analytics App.
known_false_positives: When your development is spreaded in different time zones, applying this rule can be difficult.
references:
    - https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1204/003/
drilldown_searches:
    - name: View the detection results for - "$user$"
      search: '%original_detection_search% | search  user = "$user$"'
      earliest_offset: $info_min_time$
      latest_offset: $info_max_time$
    - name: View risk events for the last 7 days for - "$user$"
      search: '| from datamodel Risk.All_Risk | search normalized_risk_object IN ("$user$") | stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime values(search_name) as "Search Name" values(risk_message) as "Risk Message" values(analyticstories) as "Analytic Stories" values(annotations._all) as "Annotations" values(annotations.mitre_attack.mitre_tactic) as "ATT&CK Tactics" by normalized_risk_object | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`'
      earliest_offset: 7d
      latest_offset: "0"
intermediate_findings:
    entities:
        - field: user
          type: user
          score: 20
          message: Container uploaded outside business hours from $user$
analytic_story:
    - Dev Sec Ops
asset_type: AWS Account
mitre_attack_id:
    - T1204.003
product:
    - Splunk Enterprise
    - Splunk Enterprise Security
    - Splunk Cloud
category: cloud
security_domain: network
tests:
    - name: True Positive Test
      attack_data:
        - data: https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/splunk/attack_data/master/datasets/attack_techniques/T1204.003/aws_ecr_container_upload/asl_ocsf_cloudtrail.json
          sourcetype: aws:asl
          source: aws_asl
      description: PORTED MANUAL TEST - Can't be tested automatically because of outside of business hours time
      test_type: experimental

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: search

`amazon_security_lake` api.operation=PutImage

Stage 2: eval

| eval hour=strftime(time/pow(10,3), "%H"), weekday=strftime(time/pow(10,3), "%A")

Stage 3: where

| where hour >= 20 OR hour < 8 OR weekday=Saturday OR weekday=Sunday

Stage 4: fillnull

| fillnull

Stage 5: stats

| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime
    BY actor.user.uid api.operation api.service.name
       http_request.user_agent src_endpoint.ip actor.user.account.uid
       cloud.provider cloud.region api.request.data
       bucketName

Stage 6: rename

| rename actor.user.uid as user api.operation as action api.service.name as dest http_request.user_agent as user_agent src_endpoint.ip as src actor.user.account.uid as vendor_account cloud.provider as vendor_product cloud.region as vendor_region

Stage 7: search

| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`

Stage 8: search

| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`

Stage 9: search

| `asl_aws_ecr_container_upload_outside_business_hours_filter`

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

FieldKindValues
api.operationeq
  • PutImage
hourge
  • 20
hourlt
  • 8
sourcetypeeq
  • aws:asl