OSSEC / HIDS Rule 171002

OSSEC / HIDS rule catalog

• Rule family: OSSEC / HIDS
• Rule ID: 171002
• Definition status: Present in current source
• Alert message / subject: Exim authentication failure.
• Rule level: 5
• Definition checked: 2026-10-21

Interpretation and response

This event is recorded as “Exim authentication failure.” Review the originating log and the affected host or service to determine whether the activity was expected.

An OSSEC/HIDS event records or correlates activity. Blocking depends on the originating application and any separately configured Active Response policy; an alert alone does not prove that an attack was blocked.

Documentation

The following guidance was migrated from the historical wiki and reviewed against the rule definition. Legacy ASL product names and interface instructions refer to the versions documented then. Use the current metadata above and your installed configuration when interpreting thresholds, notification settings and response behavior.

Description

This means that an application on the system has reported to ASL that a user has failed to authenticate to the Exim mail server.

You should investigate this event as it may be part of a broader attack.

Troubleshooting

False Positives

A legitimate event may trigger this rule; review its context. The event is not caused by ASL, but rather the application reports to ASL that it has experienced an authentication failure for a user. If your application is incorrectly reporting this, please report the issue to the application vendor. If ASL is incorrectly reporting an event, that is the application is not authentication failures, please let us know.

Source and revision

Migrated from HIDS_171002, wiki page 691, revision 5892 (20171214). Documentation review: 2026-10-21. An archived wiki status of Active is not a current deployment status.

For assistance, provide the rule ID, installed product and rule version, and a sanitized event to Atomicorp support .