Threat Hunting in Microsoft Sentinel (part 2)

 

To read part 1, please click here

To read part 3, please click here

Working with Microsoft Sentinel Hunting Queries

Whenever you want to add your own query or modify an existing one, you refer to the following procedure:

• Adding a new query- Firstly, click on the New Query button at the top of the Hunting page to open a the Create custom query page. After filling the name, Description as well as Custom query fields, you can go for the Entity mapping section to add the entity mapping to the query, if any. After successfully completing all the tasks, you can press the Create button to create a new query.

• Editing a query- If you want to modify a query, you can press on the context-sensitive menu located to the right of a query's name in the Query list, and choose Edit Query. Here, you can easily make the necessary changes and save them by simply clicking on Save button. 

• Cloning a query- To modify a pre-existing query, first, you have to clone it to make a custom query, and then make changes in the new custom query. To achieve that you have to simply press the Clone Query button present on the context-sensitive menu. This action will again open window for adding a new query with all the fields to be filled with the same information the original query have except for the Name section which will have same name as the original query with copy of prepended to it. After all the necessary actions are done, you click the Create button to create the new query. 

• Deleting a query- To delete a query, you can simply click on the context-sensitive menu and choose Delete button which will lead to a pop-up window to ask if you want to delete the query and you can click yes to delete it. 

Working with bookmarks

During investigations, it is required to keep track of the results from previously run queries or keep them as an evidence of an incident or whatever, the bookmark will surely help you to store the information for later use. 

Creating a Bookmark

Firstly, you must run a query from the Logs page to create a new bookmark. There a checkboxes present to the left of each result and you can easily select one or more to enable the Add bookmark link in the result's header bar which will open a new blade.

Here, you can fill the Bookmark name with the name of the query along with a random 12-digit hexadecimal number to offer uniqueness in the name. You can also add Tags help finding the particular bookmark and Notes so that you or anyone else can easily understand the situation whenever required. 

After filling ion all the details, you can click on the Create button to create a new bookmark.

Associating a Bookmark with an Incident

Bookmarks can only be made useful by associating them with an incident, either a new or an existing one, which can be done with the help of the context menu whose different fields are as follows-

• The new incident blade can be opened by selecting Create a new incident to create a new incident according to the selected bookmark.
• Add existing incident can also open a new blade to help you select one or more incidents you want your bookmark to be associated with. You can simply choose the incident and click Add. 
• Remove from incident will show a pop-up box to confirm if you really want to remove the particular bookmark from the incident and it will unassociated with the incident after the said confirmation. 
• Similarly, Delete bookmark will also  show a pop-up box to verify the deletion of the bookmark and delete it after the confirmation. 

 

To read part 1, please click here

To read part 3, please click here