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https://github.com/darkquasar/AzureHunter

A Cloud Forensics Powershell module to run threat hunting playbooks on data from Azure and O365
https://github.com/darkquasar/AzureHunter

azforensics azure azure-forensics azuresearcher cloud-forensics cybersecurity dfir digital-forensics incident-response powershellv5 threat-hunting threathunting unifiedauditlog

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A Cloud Forensics Powershell module to run threat hunting playbooks on data from Azure and O365

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![azurehunter-logo](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/darkquasar/AzureHunter/main/media/logo/AzureHunter-04.jpg)

A Powershell module to run threat hunting playbooks on data from Azure and O365 for Cloud Forensics purposes.

[![ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/img/githubbutton_sm.svg)](https://ko-fi.com/G2G57T1K8)

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![azurehunter-demo-gif](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/darkquasar/AzureHunter/main/media/azurehunter-gif-demo.gif)

## Getting Started

### 1. Check that you have the right O365 Permissions

The following roles are required in Exchange Online, in order to be able to have *read only* access to the UnifiedAuditLog: `View-Only Audit Logs` or `Audit Logs`.

These roles are assigned by default to the `Compliance Management` role group in Exchange Admin Center.

> **NOTE**: if you are a security analyst, incident responder or threat hunter and your organization is NOT giving you **read-only** access to these audit logs, you need to seriously question what their detection and response strategy is!

More information:
- [How to search the Audit Log using the GUI](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/search-the-audit-log-in-security-and-compliance?view=o365-worldwide#search-the-audit-log)
- [Manage role groups in Exchange Online](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/search-the-audit-log-in-security-and-compliance)
- [How to enable the UnifiedAuditLog](https://gcits.com/knowledge-base/enabling-unified-audit-log-delegated-office-365-tenants-via-powershell/)

> **NOTE**: your admin can verify these requirements by running `Get-ManagementRoleEntry "*\Search-UnifiedAuditLog"` in your Azure tenancy cloud shell or local powershell instance connected to Azure.

### 2. Ensure ExchangeOnlineManagement v2 PowerShell Module is installed

Please make sure you have **ExchangeOnlineManagement** (*EXOv2*) installed. You can find instructions on the web or go directly to my little KB on how to do it at [the soc analyst scrolls](https://docs.quasarops.com/en/public/the-soc-analyst-scrolls/powershell#useful-powershell-modules)

### 3. Either Clone the Repo or Install AzureHunter from the PSGallery

#### 3.1 Cloning the Repo

1. Clone this repository
2. Import the module `Import-Module .\source\AzureHunter.psd1`

#### 3.2 Install AzureHunter from the PSGallery

All you need to do is:

```powershell
Install-Module AzureHunter -Scope CurrentUser
Import-Module AzureHunter
```

## What is the UnifiedAuditLog?

The unified audit log contains user, group, application, domain, and directory activities performed in the Microsoft 365 admin center or in the Azure management portal. For a complete list of Azure AD events, see the list of [RecordTypes](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office-365-management-api/office-365-management-activity-api-schema#auditlogrecordtype).

The UnifiedAuditLog is a great source of cloud forensic information since it contains a wealth of data on multiple types of cloud operations like ExchangeItems, SharePoint, Azure AD, OneDrive, Data Governance, Data Loss Prevention, Windows Defender Alerts and Quarantine events, Threat intelligence events in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and the list goes on and on!

## AzureHunter Data Consistency Checks

AzureHunter implements some useful logic to ensure that the highest log density is mined and exported from Azure & O365 Audit Logs. In order to do this, we run two different operations for each cycle (batch):

1. **Automatic Window Time Reduction**: this check ensures that the time interval is reduced to the optimal interval based on the **ResultSizeUpperThreshold** parameter which by default is 20k. This means, if the amounts of logs returned within your designated **TimeInterval** is higher than **ResultSizeUpperThreshold**, then an automatic adjustment will take place.
2. **Sequential Data Check**: are returned Record Indexes sequentially valid?

![azurehunter-logical-consistency-checks](media/azhunter-structure.png)

## Usage

### Ensure you connect to ExchangeOnline
It's recommended that you run `Connect-ExchangeOnline` before running any `AzureHunter` commands. The program checks for an active remote session and attempts to connect but some versions of Powershell don't allow this and you need to do it yourself regardless.

### Run AzureHunter

**AzureHunter** has two main commands: `Search-AzureCloudUnifiedLog` and `Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook`.

The purpose of `Search-AzureCloudUnifiedLog` is to implement a complex logic to ensure that the highest percentage of *UnifiedAuditLog records* are mined from Azure. By default, it will export extracted and deduplicated records to a CSV file.

The purpose of `Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook` is to provide a flexible interface into hunting playbooks stored in the `playbooks` folder. These playbooks are designed so that anyone can contribute with their own analytics and ideas. So far, only two very simple playbooks have been developed: `AzHunter.Playbook.Exporter` and `AzHunter.Playbook.LogonAnalyser`. The `Exporter` takes care of exporting records after applying de-duplication and sorting operations to the data. The `LogonAnalyser` is in beta mode and extracts events where the `Operations` property is `UserLoggedIn`. It is an example of what can be done with the playbooks and how easy it is to construct one.

When running `Search-AzureCloudUnifiedLog`, you can pass in a list of playbooks to run per log batch. `Search-AzureCloudUnifiedLog` will pass on the batch to the playbooks via `Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook`.

Finally `Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook` can, be used standalone. If you have an export of UnifiedAuditLog records, you can load them into a Powershell Array and pass them on to this command and specify the relevant playbooks.

### Example 1 | Run search on Azure UnifiedAuditLog and extract records to CSV file (default behaviour)

```powershell
Search-AzureCloudUnifiedLog -StartDate "2020-03-06T10:00:00" -EndDate "2020-06-09T12:40:00" -TimeInterval 12 -AggregatedResultsFlushSize 5000 -Verbose
```

This command will:
- Search data between the dates in *StartDate* and *EndDate*
- Implement a window of 12 hours between these dates, which will be used to sweep the entire length of the time interval (StartDate --> EndDate). This window will be **automatically reduced and adjusted** to provide the maximum amount of records within the window, thus ensuring higher quality of output. The time window slides sequentially until reaching the **EndDate**.
- The `AggregatedResultsFlushSize` parameter speficies the batches of records that will be processed by downstream playbooks. We are telling **AzureHunter** here to process the batch of records once the total amount reaches **5000**. This way, you can get results on the fly, without having to wait for hours until a huge span of records is exported to CSV files.

### Example 2 | Run Hunting Playbooks on CSV File

We assume that you have exported UnifiedAuditLog records to a CSV file, if so you can then do:

```powershell
$RecordArray = Import-Csv .\my-exported-records.csv
Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook -Records $RecordArray -Playbooks 'AzHunter.Playbook.UAL.LogonAnalyser'
```

You can run more than one playbook by separating them via commas, they will run sequentially:

```powershell
$RecordArray = Import-Csv .\my-exported-records.csv
Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook -Records $RecordArray -Playbooks 'AzHunter.Playbook.UAL.Exporter', 'AzHunter.Playbook.UAL.LogonAnalyser'
```

### Example 3 | Run Hunting Playbook to produce a clean eDiscovery Summary Report

We assume that you have exported an eDiscovery Summary Report to a CSV file, if so you can then do:

```powershell
$eDiscoReportFile = .\eDisco-Summary-Report-PersonOfInterest.csv
Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook -Records $eDiscoReportFile -Playbooks 'AzHunter.Playbook.eDisco.SummaryReportCleaner'
```

Optionally we can pass some parameters to the playbook like so:

```powershell
$eDiscoReportFile = .\eDisco-Summary-Report-PersonOfInterest.csv
Invoke-AzHunterPlaybook -Records $eDiscoReportFile -Playbooks 'AzHunter.Playbook.eDisco.SummaryReportCleaner' -PlayBookParameters @{"CsvRecordsBatchSize" = 700}
```

The paramenter "CsvRecordsBatchSize" will tell the playbook to flush records to disk in batches of 700 records.

## Why?

Since the aftermath of the *SolarWinds Supply Chain Compromise* many tools have emerged out of deep forges of cyberforensicators, carefully developed by cyber blacksmith ninjas. These tools usually help you perform cloud forensics in Azure. My intention with AzureHunter is not to bring more noise to this crowded space, however, I found myself in the need to address some gaps that I have observed in some of the tools in the space (I might be wrong though, since there is a proliferation of tools out there and I don't know them all...):

1. *Azure cloud forensic tools don't usually address the complications of the Powershell API for the `UnifiedAuditLog`*. This API is **very unstable and inconsistent** when exporting large quantities of data. I wanted to develop an interface that is fault tolerant (**enough**) to address some of these issues focusing solely on the *UnifiedAuditLog* since this is the Azure artefact that contains the most relevant and detailed activity logs for users, applications and services.
2. *Azure cloud forensic tools don't usually put focus on developing extensible `Playbooks`*. I wanted to come up with a simple framework that would help the community create and share new playbooks to extract different types of meaning off the same data.

If, however, **you are looking for a more feature rich and mature application for Azure Cloud Forensics** I would suggest you check out the excellent work performed by the cyber security experts that created the following applications:

- CISA's [Sparrow](https://github.com/cisagov/Sparrow)
- [HAWK](https://github.com/T0pCyber/hawk)
- CrowdStrike Reporting Tool for Azure [CRT](https://github.com/CrowdStrike/CRT)

*I'm sure there is a more extensive list of tools, but these are the ones I could come up with. Feel free to suggest some more.*

### Why Powershell?

1. I didn't want to re-invent the wheel
2. Yes the Powershell interface to Azure's UnifiedAuditLog is unstable, but in terms of time-to-production it would have taken me an insane amount of hours to achieve the same thing writing a whole new interface in languages such as .NET, Golang or Python to achieve the same objectives. In the meanwhile, *the world of Cyber Defense and Response does not wait!*

## TODO

- Specify standard playbook metadata attributes that need to be present so that AzureHunter can leverage them.
- Allow for playbooks to specify dependencies on other playbooks so that one needs to be run before the other. Playbook chaining could produce interesting results and avoid code duplication.
- Develop Pester tests and Coveralls results.
- Develop documentation in ReadTheDocs.
- Allow for the specification of playbooks in SIGMA rule standard (this might require some PR to the SIGMA repo)

## More Information

For more information

* [AzureHunter.readthedocs.io](http://AzureHunter.readthedocs.io)
* [github.com/darkquasar/AzureHunter](https://github.com/darkquasar/AzureHunter)
* [ThreatHunterz.com](https://threathunterz.com)

## Acknowledgments & Supporters

Thanks to all the people that support this and other Open Source projects! You are helping guys like me walk *the way of the cyberwarrior* and deliver quality toolcraft to the community :)

## Credits

* Icon made by [itim2101](https://www.flaticon.com/authors/itim2101) from www.flaticon.com