Question

The Mysterious ADVAPI logon failure

Asked by: digitalpete

Hello,
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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Asked On
2009-09-16 at 16:01:24ID24738259
Tags

advapi negotiate security guest null sid logon failure

Topics

Operating Systems Network Security

,

Windows Network Security

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Answers

 

by: astralcomputingPosted on 2009-09-17 at 06:38:21ID: 25355945

See this: http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/SBS_Small_Business_Server/Q_23359047.html#a21488767

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.

 

by: astralcomputingPosted on 2009-09-17 at 06:39:58ID: 25355969

Run Malwarebytes, www.malwarebytes.org, a local virus scan after you update your defs, online virus scan from housecall.trendmicro.com

 

by: digitalpetePosted on 2009-09-17 at 08:07:59ID: 25357056

Further investigation on my part suggests that ADVAPI is a known Microsoft process. It's an API call to LogonUser: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174073

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

 

by: digitalpetePosted on 2009-09-24 at 08:37:01ID: 31629757

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.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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