4770 Security log · Kerberos Authentication Service info severity medium volume

Windows Event ID 4770 — A Kerberos service ticket was renewed

Kerberos service ticket renewed before expiry. Normal for long-running services.

Why event 4770 matters

Rarely suspicious alone. Golden Tickets with very long lifetimes may show unusual renewal patterns.

How to detect it

No standalone alerting. Use as supporting evidence for Golden Ticket investigations.

Log source
Security
Advanced Audit Policy — enable the 'Kerberos Authentication Service' subcategory (Success and/or Failure).
Fields to pivot on
SubjectUserNameTargetUserNameLogonTypeIpAddressWorkstationName

Detection queries

Starting points — adapt the log source, projected fields and thresholds for your environment.

Sentinel / Defender KQL
SecurityEvent
| where EventID == 4770   // A Kerberos service ticket was renewed
| project TimeGenerated, Computer, SubjectUserName, TargetUserName, LogonType, IpAddress, WorkstationName
| sort by TimeGenerated desc
Splunk SPL
index=* sourcetype="WinEventLog:Security" EventCode=4770
| stats count earliest(_time) as first_seen latest(_time) as last_seen by ComputerName
| sort - count   `# A Kerberos service ticket was renewed — add EventData fields: SubjectUserName, TargetUserName, LogonType, IpAddress`
Hunt event 4770 in Sentinel/Defender →
Build a KQL query for this event in the KQL Query Builder.
Search all event IDs →
Open the interactive Windows Event ID lookup.

Related Kerberos Authentication Service events

4768 A Kerberos authentication ticket (TGT) was requested 4769 A Kerberos service ticket was requested 4771 Kerberos pre-authentication failed 4772 A Kerberos authentication ticket request failed 4773 A Kerberos service ticket request failed 4774 An account was mapped for logon 4775 An account could not be mapped for logon 4776 The domain controller attempted to validate the credentials for an account (NTLM) 4777 The domain controller failed to validate the credentials for an account 4820 A Kerberos Ticket-Granting-Ticket (TGT) was denied because the device does not meet the access control restrictions 4821 A Kerberos service ticket was denied because the user, device, or both do not meet the access control restrictions 4822 NTLM authentication failed because the account was a member of the Protected Users group

Frequently asked questions

What is Windows Event ID 4770?

A Kerberos service ticket was renewed. Kerberos service ticket renewed before expiry. Normal for long-running services.

Which log records event 4770?

Event 4770 is written to the Security channel by Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing. Advanced Audit Policy — enable the 'Kerberos Authentication Service' subcategory (Success and/or Failure).

How do you detect activity around event 4770?

No standalone alerting. Use as supporting evidence for Golden Ticket investigations.