| name | investigating-azure-incidents |
| description | Investigate a suspected Azure and Entra ID compromise from the control plane — Azure Activity Log, Entra sign-in and audit logs, and the Microsoft 365 unified audit log, queried with KQL in Log Analytics/Sentinel — to reconstruct identity abuse, MFA and conditional-access bypass, service-principal and app-consent abuse, role changes, and Key Vault access. Use when the evidence is Azure/Entra logs rather than a host. Identity is the perimeter here; the sign-in and audit logs are the crime scene. |
| verified | 2026-08-08T00:00:00.000Z |
Investigating Azure Incidents
Azure intrusions are usually identity intrusions. The attacker signs in as a
user, consents an app, adds a credential to a service principal, or elevates a
role — and each leaves a record in the Entra sign-in logs, the Entra audit log,
the Azure Activity Log, or the Microsoft 365 unified audit log. The
investigator's task is to correlate across those planes, because a single one
rarely tells the whole story: the sign-in log shows the authentication, the
audit log shows what identity changed, and the activity log shows what resources
moved. Query them with KQL and build one timeline.
Confirm the tenant/subscription is in scope per AGENTS.md.
Mind log retention: Entra sign-in/audit logs have short default retention unless
exported to Log Analytics, so preserve early. This is read-only investigation;
disabling accounts or revoking sessions is the operator's containment call.
When to Use
- A suspected Azure/Entra compromise where the evidence is cloud logs
- Tracing identity abuse: risky sign-ins, impossible travel, token/session theft
- Confirming MFA or conditional-access bypass
- Investigating service-principal credential additions and OAuth app-consent abuse
- Reconstructing role assignments (incl. PIM), resource tampering, and Key Vault access
When NOT to Use
- On-host artifacts of an Azure VM — use
investigating-windows-endpoints (or acquire the disk/memory)
- AWS or GCP — use
investigating-aws-incidents or investigating-gcp-incidents
- Proactive search with no incident yet — use
hunting-threats
- Offensive cloud testing — use
exploiting-cloud-platforms
- Proactive hardening — use
hardening-cloud-posture
- Running the whole incident — use
responding-to-incidents
- Packaging IOCs into a product — use
producing-threat-intelligence
Reconstruct Across the Log Planes
Three Entra/Azure sources plus the M365 unified audit log, correlated:
- Entra sign-in logs — authentications: user, app, IP, device, MFA result, conditional-access result, and the risk state. Impossible travel, legacy-auth protocols, and token-replay show here.
- Entra audit logs — directory changes:
Add service principal credentials, Consent to application, Add member to role, Update conditional access policy, user/credential changes.
- Azure Activity Log — resource control plane: role assignments (
Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write), resource and network-security-group changes, Key Vault operations.
- M365 unified audit log — mailbox rules, sharing, and Exchange/SharePoint actions when the compromise touches M365.
Query with KQL in Log Analytics/Sentinel:
// New privileged role assignments in the window
AuditLogs
| where TimeGenerated between (datetime(2026-08-01) .. datetime(2026-08-08))
| where OperationName has "Add member to role"
| extend role = tostring(TargetResources[0].displayName)
| project TimeGenerated, InitiatedBy, role, Result
// Sign-ins that bypassed or failed MFA / conditional access
SigninLogs
| where ResultType == 0 and AuthenticationRequirement == "singleFactorAuthentication"
| project TimeGenerated, UserPrincipalName, IPAddress, AppDisplayName, ConditionalAccessStatus
High-signal operations: service-principal credential additions and app consents
(a common persistence and data-access path), conditional-access policy edits,
new Global Admin / Privileged Role Admin grants, Key Vault secret reads from
unusual IPs, and mailbox forwarding rules. Pivot on IP, user agent, app id, and
service-principal object id.
Rationalizations to Reject
- "Sign-in succeeded with no risk flag, so it's fine." Risk scoring misses token theft and consented-app access. Corroborate with the audit and activity logs.
- "MFA is on, so the account is safe." Check whether MFA was actually satisfied or bypassed via legacy auth, a trusted location, or a stolen session — the sign-in log says which.
- "It's just an app consent." Malicious OAuth consent is a durable, MFA-surviving foothold. Treat consented apps as identity persistence.
- "Only one log source needed." Azure splits authentication, directory change, and resource change across three logs. One alone under-tells the story.
- "Retention looks fine." Entra default retention is short without export. Preserve now, not after the write window closes.
Deliverable
# Azure Investigation <AZ-###> Date: <UTC> Analyst: <name>
Tenant / sub / scope: <ids, in-scope confirmation>
Window: <UTC start–end>
Entry: <compromised identity / app / service principal>
Auth path: <sign-in evidence: IP, device, MFA/CA result>
Directory changes: <role adds, SP credentials, app consents>
Resource / data: <Activity Log + Key Vault + M365 actions>
Persistence: <app consents, SP creds, CA policy edits>
Timeline: <UTC, chronological across planes>
Conclusion: compromised / not / could-not-determine Confidence: <>
Save log exports and KQL results as {tool}_{tenant}_{YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS}.{ext}
and log identities/IOCs via maintaining-engagement-state. ATT&CK IDs common
here (T1078.004 Valid Cloud Accounts, T1098.003 Additional Cloud Roles,
T1556.009 Modify Authentication Process, T1538 Cloud Service Dashboard, T1528
Steal Application Access Token) — re-verify before citing.
References
investigating-aws-incidents, investigating-gcp-incidents — the sibling cloud investigationsinvestigating-windows-endpoints — when an Azure VM host must be examinedresponding-to-incidents — the incident this feedshardening-cloud-posture — the identity controls this investigation tests in hindsightexploiting-cloud-platforms — the offensive counterpart TTPs- Entra sign-in/audit logs, Azure Activity Log, M365 unified audit log, Log Analytics/Sentinel (KQL)
