CyberArk Privileged Access Security Error Audit Event Promotion

This detection identifies error-level audit events within CyberArk Privileged Access Security (PAS), which are designated by the vendor as alertable. These events are crucial for monitoring the security posture of privileged accounts and the overall CyberArk environment. The rule is designed to promote visibility of critical security incidents, particularly those related to privilege escalation and potential initial access attempts. It relies on data ingested through the CyberArk PAS Fleet integration, Filebeat module, or a similarly structured data source. By focusing on error events, security teams can efficiently prioritize investigations into potentially malicious activities affecting their most sensitive accounts and systems.

Attack Chain

1. Attacker gains initial access to a system with credentials that have limited privileges.
2. The attacker attempts to access a restricted resource or perform an action that requires higher privileges within the CyberArk environment.
3. CyberArk PAS detects the unauthorized attempt based on its configured policies.
4. CyberArk PAS generates an error-level audit event, logging the failed attempt with a specific event code.
5. The security monitoring system ingests this error event.
6. This detection triggers based on the error-level audit event.
7. Security analysts investigate the event to determine the nature and scope of the unauthorized activity.
8. Based on the investigation findings, appropriate remediation steps are taken, such as revoking compromised credentials or strengthening access controls.

Impact

A successful privilege escalation attack can allow an attacker to gain complete control over critical systems and data within the CyberArk PAS environment. This can lead to data breaches, system outages, and significant financial losses. Initial access via compromised credentials, combined with privilege escalation attempts, poses a serious threat to the entire organization. By detecting these error events, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of a successful attack.

Recommendation

• Deploy the Sigma rule CyberArk PAS Error Event to your SIEM to detect error-level events in CyberArk PAS audit logs.
• Tune the CyberArk PAS Error Event rule to exclude any event.code values that are known false positives in your environment, as described in the rule's false_positives field.
• Ensure that the CyberArk PAS Fleet integration or Filebeat module is properly configured to collect and forward audit logs to your SIEM (see "Setup" section).
• Investigate all triggered alerts from the CyberArk PAS Error Event rule to determine the cause and impact of the error event.
• Consult the CyberArk documentation to understand the specific meaning and implications of each event.code that triggers an alert (see references).