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4723(S, F): An attempt was made to change an account's password.

  • Article
Event 4723 illustration

Subcategory: Audit User Account Management

Event Description:

This event generates every time a user attempts to change his or her password.

For user accounts, this event generates on domain controllers, member servers, and workstations.

For domain accounts, a Failure event generates if new password fails to meet the password policy.

For local accounts, a Failure event generates if new password fails to meet the password policy or old password is wrong.

For domain accounts if old password was wrong, then “4771: Kerberos pre-authentication failed” or “4776: The computer attempted to validate the credentials for an account” will be generated on domain controller if specific subcategories were enabled on it.

Typically you will see 4723 events with the same Subject\Security ID and Target Account\Security ID fields, which is normal behavior.

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>4723</EventID> 
 <Version>0</Version> 
 <Level>0</Level> 
 <Task>13824</Task> 
 <Opcode>0</Opcode> 
 <Keywords>0x8020000000000000</Keywords> 
 <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-08-22T01:32:51.494558000Z" /> 
 <EventRecordID>175722</EventRecordID> 
 <Correlation /> 
 <Execution ProcessID="520" ThreadID="1112" /> 
 <Channel>Security</Channel> 
 <Computer>DC01.contoso.local</Computer> 
 <Security /> 
 </System>
- <EventData>
 <Data Name="TargetUserName">dadmin</Data> 
 <Data Name="TargetDomainName">CONTOSO</Data> 
 <Data Name="TargetSid">S-1-5-21-3457937927-2839227994-823803824-1104</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectUserSid">S-1-5-21-3457937927-2839227994-823803824-1104</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectUserName">dadmin</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectDomainName">CONTOSO</Data> 
 <Data Name="SubjectLogonId">0x1a9b76</Data> 
 <Data Name="PrivilegeList">-</Data> 
 </EventData>
 </Event>

Required Server Roles: None.

Minimum OS Version: Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista.

Event Versions: 0.

Field Descriptions:

Subject:

  • Security ID [Type = SID]: SID of account that made an attempt to change Target’s Account password. 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 made an attempt to change Target’s Account password.

  • 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.”

Target Account: account for which the password change was requested.

  • Security ID [Type = SID]: SID of account for which the password change was requested. 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.

  • Account Name [Type = UnicodeString]: the name of the account for which the password change was requested.

  • Account Domain [Type = UnicodeString]: target account’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 local user accounts, this field will contain the name of the computer or device that this account belongs to, for example: “Win81”.

Additional Information:

  • Privileges [Type = UnicodeString]: the list of user privileges which were used during the operation, for example, SeBackupPrivilege. This parameter might not be captured in the event, and in that case appears as “-”. See full list of user privileges in “Table 8. User Privileges.”.

Security Monitoring Recommendations

For 4723(S, F): An attempt was made to change an account's password.

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

  • If you have a high-value domain or local user account for which you need to monitor every password change attempt, monitor all 4723 events with the “Target Account\Security ID” that corresponds to the account.

  • If you have a high-value domain or local account for which you need to monitor every change, monitor all 4723 events with the “Target Account\Security ID” that corresponds to the account.

  • If you have domain or local accounts for which the password should never be changed, you can monitor all 4723 events with the “Target Account\Security ID” that corresponds to the account.