Very often in cybersecurity, we share some level of indicators of compromise (IOCs), such as IP addresses, domain names, or file names or hashes. There are other indicators associated with many compromises or breaches that can add a great deal of granularity or insight to the overall incident, particularly as the intrusion data and intel applies to other observed incidents.
One such indicator is the workstation name, so named based on the indicator as found within Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing/4624 event records, indicating a successful login, as well as within Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing/4625 and Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing/4776 events.
The value of the workstation name can depend upon the type of incident you’re responding to, examining, or attempting to detect earlier in the attack cycle (i.e., moving “left of bang”). For example, many organizations become aware that files have been encrypted and they’ve been ransomed after those two things have happened. However, for someone to access an infrastructure or network, often they first need to access or log into an endpoint. Depending upon how this is achieved, there may be indicators left in popular Windows Event Logs.