Detection rules › Splunk
System Time enumeration (Windows Event Log)
An adversary may gather the system time and/or time zone from a local or remote system. The system time is set and stored by the Windows Time Service within a domain to maintain time synchronization between systems and services in an enterprise network. This use case looks for net time executions
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Discovery | T1124 System Time Discovery |
References
Event coverage
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
Rule body yaml
id: '8151.10003'
title: System Time enumeration
description: 'An adversary may gather the system time and/or time zone from a local
or remote system. The system time is set and stored by the Windows Time Service
within a domain to maintain time synchronization between systems and services in
an enterprise network. This use case looks for net time executions. -- Threat Actor
Association: APT28 (aka.Fancy Bear, Fighting Ursa, Forest Blizzard, Pawn Storm,
TA422, STRONTIUM) - Software Association: Conti'
logic_format: Splunk
logic: '`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR
"<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) "net" TERM(time) | regex process="(?i)net.*?time.*?\x5c\x5c"
| table _time, host, user process, process_*, signature_id, parent_* | bin span=1s
| stats values(*) as * by _time, host '
techniques:
- discovery:system time discovery
technique_id:
- T1124
data_category:
- Windows event logs
- Process command-line parameters
references:
- https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/01/12/abusing-cloud-services-to-fly-under-the-radar/
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: search
`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR "<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) "net" TERM(time)
Stage 2: regex
| regex process="(?i)net.*?time.*?\x5c\x5c"
Stage 3: table
| table _time, host, user process, process_*, signature_id, parent_*
Stage 4: bucket
| bin span=1s
Stage 5: stats
| stats values(*) as * by _time, host
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.
Search terms
Bare-string tokens in the SPL search body. Splunk matches each token against _raw (the untyped raw event text) anywhere it appears, not against a specific field. These don't surface in the Indicators table because they aren't predicates on a known field.
| Stage | Term |
|---|---|
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | "<EventID>4688<" |
| 1 | "net" |
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | time |