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VMware ESXi - Multiple Failed Shell Login via SSH

Description

Identifies a failed ESXi Shell login via SSH in a short TimeFrame. This could be suspicious activity especially if this alert is seen triggering many times within a short time frame which could be evidence of a brute-force attack. TriggerThreshold can be adapted.
Rule type
Scheduled
Version
1.0.0
Declared status
Available
Query frequency
10m
Query period
10m
Trigger
gt 0

Declared MITRE coverage

Declared sources

Metadata from the source file. No dependencies inferred from KQL.

Connectors

KQL query

Original query, unchanged.

// To Adapt to your environment
let triggerThreshold = 10;
VMwareESXi
| where SyslogMessage has "sshd"
| where SyslogMessage contains "authentication failure"
| extend SrcUsername = extract(@'\[info\]\s+\[(.*?)\]', 1, SyslogMessage)
| extend DstHostname = extract(@'\[\d+\]\s+\[(.*?)\s+on', 1, SyslogMessage)
| extend SrcIpAddr = extract(@'\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})', 1, SyslogMessage)
| summarize make_set(SrcUsername),count() by SrcIpAddr,DstHostname
| where count_ >= triggerThreshold
| extend HostCustomEntity = DstHostname

Declared entities

HostIP

Related content

Links established from declared identifiers and solution manifests.

Source provenance

GitHub

Displayed values come from files in Azure/Azure-Sentinel. They describe the published template, not your workspace configuration.

Source identifier
22d177d5-588c-4f1a-a332-2695f52079bb
Additional source files 2Solutions/VMWareESXi/Analytic Rules/ESXiMultipleFailedSSHLogin.yamlsource ↗Solutions/VMWareESXi/Data/Solution_VMWareESXi.jsonsolution-membership ↗
GSTEP / CATALOG TRACKING

Added to catalog : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC
Last change observed : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC

GSTEP sync dates, separate from the source content’s publication dates.