Web Application Suspicious Activity: No User Agentedit

A request to a web application server contained no identifying user agent string.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • apm--transaction
  • traces-apm*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-6m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • APM

Version: 7 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.6.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.14.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positivesedit

Some normal applications and scripts may contain no user agent. Most legitimate web requests from the Internet contain a user agent string. Requests from web browsers almost always contain a user agent string. If the source is unexpected, the user unauthorized, or the request unusual, these may indicate suspicious or malicious activity.

Rule queryedit

url.path:*

Rule filtersedit

{
    "$state": {
        "store": "appState"
    },
    "exists": {
        "field": "user_agent.original"
    },
    "meta": {
        "disabled": false,
        "indexRefName": "kibanaSavedObjectMeta.searchSourceJSON.filter[0].meta.index",
        "key": "user_agent.original",
        "negate": true,
        "type": "exists",
        "value": "exists"
    }
}

Rule version historyedit

Version 7 (7.14.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    url.path:*
Version 6 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 5 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.10.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.9.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.7.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    url.path: *