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Found something that is disturbing (to say the least) on my server 2008 domain controller event log. Both of which occured today almost exactly 7 hours apart:
Here is the log entry:
An account failed to log on.
Subject:
Security ID: CORPHQ\administrator
Account Name: administrator
Account Domain: CORPHQ
Logon ID: 0x3307198
Logon Type: 3
Account For Which Logon Failed:
Security ID: NULL SID
Account Name: Guest
Account Domain: CORPHQ
Failure Information:
Failure Reason: Account currently disabled.
Status: 0xc000006e
Sub Status: 0xc0000072
Process Information:
Caller Process ID: 0x13dc
Caller Process Name: C:\Windows\explorer.exe
Network Information:
Workstation Name: SERVER (This is not the real name, for security reasons)
Source Network Address: -
Source Port: -
Detailed Authentication Information:
Logon Process: Advapi
Authentication Package: Negotiate
Transited Services: -
Package Name (NTLM only): -
Key Length: 0
All values are accurate, except for the server name, which I changed for security reasons. Does anyone know anything about this? I've not seen this in the event log before. What's more bizarre is that it's trying to use the guest account. Can anyone provide insight as to what the Advapi Logon Process is? Obviously my server recognizes it?
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Run Malwarebytes, www.malwarebytes.org, a local virus scan after you update your defs, online virus scan from housecall.trendmicro.com
Further investigation on my part suggests that ADVAPI is a known Microsoft process. It's an API call to LogonUser: http://support.microsoft.c
This is a server and is not used for Web Browsing. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I would tend to believe this would be a hacking attempt versus a virus. Someone or some machine tried to logon to the server using the disabled "guest" acccount. No further attempts to login with the guest account have occurred since then or prior to (according to the event log). No other failed login attempts have been noted.
The Netdevil trojan, apparently is very intrusive and damaging to the OS. I observed nothing else that would indicate a virus. A search for advapi.exe turned up nothing.
I will keep an eye out to see if this is virus related. If anyone has any other suggestions besides a virus, I would love to hear it. I'll continue monitoring this post for another day.
Thanks,
digitalpete
Too often, it seems the immediate reaction for this scenario is to point out a virus. This is not unwarranted, as many times, strange behaviors on computers are attributed to viruses. At first glance, the event has the appearance of symptoms of the netdevil virus however - No damage to the OS occurred and no other events of this type have occurred since. The netdevil virus is quite destructive from the research I have done, which leads me to believe this was not the source of the event that appeared in my event log.
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Answer for Membership
by: astralcomputingPosted on 2009-09-17 at 06:38:21ID: 25355945
See this: http://www.experts-exchang e.com/OS/ M icrosoft_O perating_S ystems/Ser ver/SBS_Sm all_Busine ss_Server/ Q_23359047 .html#a214 88767
In this article, a similar incident was tagged to spyware/virus.
Processlibrary.com shows advapi.exe as potentially the result of the netdevil.12 virus.