Windows Event ID 4663 – An Attempt Was Made To Access An Object

Event 4663 is logged when a particular operation is performed on an object. This object could be of any type, such as, file system, kernel, registry object, or a file system object that resides on a removable storage device. The object's SACL needs to enabled ACE to handle access right use for this event to be logged.

Event 4663 is different from event 4656 in that 4663 doesn't have failure events and shows that the access right was used, instead of just showing that it was requested.

This log data provides the following information:

• Security ID
• Account Name
• Account Domain
• Logon ID
• Object Server
• Object Type
• Object Name
• Handle ID
• Resource Attributes
• Process ID
• Process Name
• Accesses
• Access Mask

Why does event ID 4663 need to be monitored?

• To monitor the access attempts to critical file system objects, and objects which have a sensitive or critical key
• To monitor Access Request Information, such as WriteData, AppendData, WriteEA, DeleteChild, WriteAttributes, DELETE, WRITE_DAC, and WRITE_OWNER
• To prevent privilege abuse
• To detect abnormal and potentially malicious activity
• To ensure compliance with regulatory mandates

Pro tip:

ADAudit Plus provides real-time pre-configured reports and auditing of the changes along with alerts within a Domain & OU. The advanced Group Policy settings real-time audit reports provide detailed information about object related events.