Alertrule from github to Azure sentinel

The Azure Sentinel community is great. Many people contribute to the Azure Sentinel GitHub site. Rod Trent wrote an article on how to deploy analytic rules from GitHub to your Sentinel instance. This is great, however, the rules are written in YAML and can therefore easily be imported programmatically.

I have written a short PowerShell function for that purpose. Let’s check the workflow:

Browse to the Sentinel repo: https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/tree/master/Detections

Click on your a detection query, then click on raw:

Copy the raw URL and save it somewhere temporarily. Now, in Sentinel, click on Settings / Workplace Settings and note the resource group and the workspace name.

That’s all we need. Now lets start the with the script from GitHub.

import-module .\alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps1

New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub -resourceGroupName "resource group name" -workspaceName "workspace name" -gitHubRawUrl "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/master/Detections/SecurityEvent/NOBELIUM_SuspiciousRundll32Exec.yaml"

Next, you will be prompted for authentication and then the alert rule will be created based on the criteria specified in the yaml file:

Back in Sentinel, the Rule has been created for you …

… with the paramters from the yaml file.

Of course, you can edit the rule to meet your needs:

UPDATE 18-March-2021

Since you asked for it: this function now also supports batch-mode. For that you have to set -isGitHubDirectoryUrl to $true and specify the Sentinel GitHub Repo URL of a directory beneath “Detections”:

New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub -resourceGroupName "rg-name" -workspaceName "ws-name" -gitHubRawUrl "https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/tree/master/Detections/SecurityEvent" -isGitHubDirectoryUrl $true

With this you can easily create like 30 rules from a directory in the repo in a few minutes.

Happy Hunting!

30 comments

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  • hello after install/import of the module, getting error:
    New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub : The term ‘New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script
    file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
    At line:1 char:2
    + New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub -resourceGroupName “prd-threatdect …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

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    • Check my exact description above. You first have to run the ps by . .\alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps then the function is known to the system. Let me know if you got it working. Thanks

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      • Hi, first thanks for making this. But I’m also getting the same error message:

        PS /Users/john> ./alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps1
        Module Az.SecurityInsights exists
        Module powershell-yaml exists
        PS /Users/john> New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGiHub -resourceGroupName “xxxxx” -workspaceName “xxxx” -gitHubRawUrl “https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/master/Detections/ThreatIntelligenceIndicator/FileHashEntity_SecurityEvent.yaml”
        New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGiHub: The term ‘New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGiHub’ is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.
        Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

        PS /Users/john> New-AzSentinel
        New-AzSentinelAlertRule New-AzSentinelDataConnector New-AzSentinelIncidentComment
        New-AzSentinelAlertRuleAction New-AzSentinelHuntingRule New-AzSentinelIncidentOwner
        New-AzSentinelBookmark New-AzSentinelIncident

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  • Hi John, you forgot one dot – check my exact description above … 🙂

    Like

  • i’m getting

    New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub:
    Line |
    68 | New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub
    | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    | You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.

    Can you help please ??

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    • Hi Tom, please paste the command line, you are using here … thanks

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      • $rg = “rg-sentinel”
        $wks = “sentinel-1”
        . .\alertruletosentinel.ps1
        New-AzSentinelAlertRuleFromGitHub -resourceGroupName $rg -workspaceName $wks -gitHubRawUrl “https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/tree/master/Detections/SecurityEvent” -isGitHubDirectoryUrl $true

        thanks Jan

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  • Hey Tom, looks fine for me what you are doing here. I updated the script in GH zu include some high-level “debugging” status info. It will print out the URLs it finds etc. Use the new version and see if something comes back. You get the auth request? (a browser window should open and you would need to auth with an account with permissions in your Sentinel.) ALSO: I have updated the blogpost above and changed . .\alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps1 to import-module .\alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps1, since this seems to confuse lots of people …

    Like

  • The import of a single rule works fine for me, but using the syntax above batch mode runs and just seems to sit there and hang?

    Anyone had any success with batch mode import?

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  • looks good, so somewhere an auth window should pop up where you would have to auth against Azure. Have you seen this?

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    • Yup – The auth window pops up – the behaviour is the same as if I import a single rule (which works), but that when I try the batch command (as above) it accepts the command and nothing appears to happen – no errors are returned. Yet when I import a single rule it works and the output displays the detail of the rule that was imported

      Thanks for any assistance – if I can get this working it will be a massive timesaver

      Like

  • just imported all the rules from the OfficeActivity URL as you stated it. Its working for me as intended. Do you have the latest version of the script from GH?

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    • Yup – I’m using the one that was committed 7days ago. Strange that it works perfectly for you. I’ll ask my colleagues to try in their tenants and see if my tenant is the anomaly.

      Like

  • Thanks so much for this.

    Its gets as far as displaying the following:

    onnect to Azure Account …

    get existing alert rules …
    True was set to true getting all URLs on page …

    It hangs at this point.

    Like

    • then I would assume the invoke-webrequest is not working somehow. Try: Invoke-WebRequest “https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/tree/master/Detections/OfficeActivity” in the powershell window … is that working? If not – maybe your IE was never started than try the “-usebasicparsing” switch in PowerShell5 or maybe you have a proxy in between …

      Like

  • HI that works grate thanks
    I can see some people having issue If they are connected to multiple Azure subscriptions, you may so they may want to change the following to line 40
    Connect-AzAccount -Tenant ‘ID ‘ -SubscriptionId ‘ID’
    And bind it to a subscription and have a script per subscription

    Like

    • I tried this but I could never get it to work. I added the line, put in the Tenant ID and Subscription ID but nothing changed.

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  • Hi, I get the error “Cannot bind argument to parameter ‘existingRules’ because it is null. Can u not use this script if there aren’t any rules already in place?

    Like

  • Having a few issues with the script:
    PS> New-AzSentinelAlertRule -resourceGroupName “rg-securityoperations” -workspaceName “LAW-SecurityOperations” -gitHubRawUrl “https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/tree/master/Detections/AzureDevOpsAuditing” -isGitHubDirectoryUrl $true

    I get:
    New-AzSentinelAlertRule: A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name ‘gitHubRawUrl’.

    When I first started I downloaded the script from your github and ran the script ./alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps1 and also tried Import-Module ./alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps1

    Like

  • This is really useful, is there an option to execute somethiing similar for Hunting Queries?

    Thanks!

    Like

  • ANDY@SERVERSTUFF.CO.UK

    I’m not great with PS and have run into a problem. I have multiple subscriptions so get WARNING: TenantId ‘zzzzzz’ contains more than one active subscription. First one will be
    selected for further use. To select another subscription, use Set-AzContext.
    I tried to use Set-AZcontext with my subscription name in various location in the script. However still never works, seems to bomb out with :-
    New-SingleAlertRuleFromGitHub : Cannot bind argument to parameter ‘existingRules’ because it is null.
    At C:\Intel\alertRuleFromGHToSentinel.ps1:63 char:150
    + … rkspaceName -gitHubRawUrl $gitHubRawUrl -existingRules $existingRules

    Like

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