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4799(S): A security-enabled local group membership was enumerated.

  • Article
Event 4799 illustration

Subcategory: Audit Security Group Management

Event Description:

This event generates when a process enumerates the members of a security-enabled local group on the computer or device.

This event doesn't generate when group members were enumerated using Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.

Note  For recommendations, see Security Monitoring Recommendations for this event.


Event XML:

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
 <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing" Guid="{54849625-5478-4994-A5BA-3E3B0328C30D}" /> 
 <EventID>4799</EventID> 
 <Version>0</Version> 
 <Level>0</Level> 
 <Task>13826</Task> 
 <Opcode>0</Opcode> 
 <Keywords>0x8020000000000000</Keywords> 
 <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-12T03:50:23.625407600Z" /> 
 <EventRecordID>685</EventRecordID> 
 <Correlation ActivityID="{CBAEDE08-1CF0-0000-50DE-AECBF01CD101}" /> 
 <Execution ProcessID="744" ThreadID="188" /> 
 <Channel>Security</Channel> 
 <Computer>WIN10-1.contoso.local</Computer> 
 <Security /> 
 </System>
- <EventData>
 <Data Name="TargetUserName">Administrators</Data> 
 <Data Name="TargetDomainName">Builtin</Data> 
 <Data Name="TargetSid">S-1-5-32-544</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectUserSid">S-1-5-21-1377283216-344919071-3415362939-1104</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectUserName">dadmin</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectDomainName">CONTOSO</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectLogonId">0x72d9d</Data> 
 <Data Name="CallerProcessId">0xc80</Data> 
 <Data Name="CallerProcessName">C:\\Windows\\System32\\mmc.exe</Data> 
 </EventData>
</Event>

Required Server Roles: none.

Minimum OS Version: Windows Server 2016, Windows 10.

Event Versions: 0.

Field Descriptions:

Subject:

  • Security ID [Type = SID]: SID of account that requested the “enumerate security-enabled local group members” operation. Event Viewer automatically tries to resolve SIDs and show the account name. If the SID cannot be resolved, you will see the source data in the event.

Note  A security identifier (SID) is a unique value of variable length used to identify a trustee (security principal). Each account has a unique SID that is issued by an authority, such as an Active Directory domain controller, and stored in a security database. Each time a user logs on, the system retrieves the SID for that user from the database and places it in the access token for that user. The system uses the SID in the access token to identify the user in all subsequent interactions with Windows security. When a SID has been used as the unique identifier for a user or group, it cannot ever be used again to identify another user or group. For more information about SIDs, see Security identifiers.

  • Account Name [Type = UnicodeString]: the name of the account that requested the “enumerate security-enabled local group members” operation.

  • Account Domain [Type = UnicodeString]: subject’s domain or computer name. Formats vary, and include the following:

    • Domain NETBIOS name example: CONTOSO

    • Lowercase full domain name: contoso.local

    • Uppercase full domain name: CONTOSO.LOCAL

    • For some well-known security principals, such as LOCAL SERVICE or ANONYMOUS LOGON, the value of this field is “NT AUTHORITY”.

    • For local user accounts, this field will contain the name of the computer or device that this account belongs to, for example: “Win81”.

  • Logon ID [Type = HexInt64]: hexadecimal value that can help you correlate this event with recent events that might contain the same Logon ID, for example, “4624: An account was successfully logged on.”

Group:

  • Security ID [Type = SID]: SID of the group which members were enumerated. Event Viewer automatically tries to resolve SIDs and show the account name. If the SID cannot be resolved, you will see the source data in the event.

  • Group Name [Type = UnicodeString]: the name of the group which members were enumerated.

  • Group Domain [Type = UnicodeString]: group’s domain or computer name. Formats vary, and include the following:

    • For Builtin groups this field has “Builtin” value.

    • Domain NETBIOS name example: CONTOSO

    • Lowercase full domain name: contoso.local

    • Uppercase full domain name: CONTOSO.LOCAL

    • For a local group, this field will contain the name of the computer to which this group belongs, for example: “Win81”.

Process Information:

  • Process ID [Type = Pointer]: hexadecimal Process ID of the process that enumerated the members of the group. Process ID (PID) is a number used by the operating system to uniquely identify an active process. To see the PID for a specific process you can, for example, use Task Manager (Details tab, PID column):

    Task manager illustration

If you convert the hexadecimal value to decimal, you can compare it to the values in Task Manager.

You can also correlate this process ID with a process ID in other events, for example, “4688: A new process has been created” Process Information\New Process ID.

  • Process Name [Type = UnicodeString]: full path and the name of the executable for the process.

Security Monitoring Recommendations

For 4799(S): A security-enabled local group membership was enumerated.

Important  For this event, also see Appendix A: Security monitoring recommendations for many audit events.

  • If you have a list of critical local security groups in the organization, and need to specifically monitor these groups for any access (in this case, enumeration of group membership), monitor events with the “Group\Group Name” values that correspond to the critical local security groups. Examples of critical local groups are built-in local administrators, built-in backup operators, and so on.

  • If you need to monitor each time the membership is enumerated for a local or domain security group, to see who enumerated the membership and when, monitor this event. Typically, this event is used as an informational event, to be reviewed if needed.