T1111 — Multi-Factor Authentication Interception

# T1111 - Multi-Factor Authentication Interception

## SOC Recommendation
Investigate Multi-Factor Authentication Interception activity in the context of Credential Access: confirm scope, affected host/identity, and whether it matches expected administrative behaviour before deciding this is benign.

## D3FEND Mappings
| D3FEND Technique | Relationship | Practical SOC Action |
|---|---|---|
| Radiation Hardening | Harden | Apply Radiation Hardening to reduce this technique's viability before an incident occurs. |
| Hardware Component Inventory | Model | Use Hardware Component Inventory to establish a baseline that makes this technique's deviations easier to spot. |

## Investigation Steps
1. Review Defender for Endpoint / Defender XDR alerts and timeline for the affected host or identity.
2. Check Sentinel analytics rules and incidents correlated with this technique.
3. Review Entra ID sign-in and audit logs if the technique involves an identity or cloud resource.

## Evidence to Collect
- Host or resource affected
- Account or identity involved
- Timestamp of the activity
- Related process, file, or network artifact
- Any preceding or follow-on alerts

## Response Actions
| Action | Risk | Automation Safe | Approval Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contain the affected host or account | Medium | No | Yes |
| Collect and preserve evidence | Low | Yes | No |

## KQL
```kql
GWorkspaceActivityReports 
| where EventMessage =~ 'TURN_OFF_2_STEP_VERIFICATION'
| extend AccountCustomEntity = ActorEmail
```
```kql
let time_threshold = 10m;
let RiskySignins = materialize (SigninLogs
| where TimeGenerated > ago(1d)
| where ResultType == 0
| where RiskLevelDuringSignIn =~ "high" or RiskLevelAggregated =~ "high"
| extend SignInTime = TimeGenerated, Name=split(UserPrincipalName, "@")[0], UPNSuffix=split(UserPrincipalName, "@")[1]);
let ips = todynamic(toscalar(RiskySignins | summarize make_list(IPAddress)));
RiskySignins
| join kind=inner (_Im_WebSession(starttime=ago(1d), ipaddr_has_any_prefix=ips, eventresult="Success", pack=True))
on $left.IPAddress == $right.DstIpAddr
| where EventStartTime < TimeGenerated
| extend TimeDelta = TimeGenerated - EventStartTime
| where TimeDelta <= time_threshold
| extend NetworkEventStartTime = EventStartTime, NetworkEventEndTime = EventEndTime
| extend SrcUsername = column_ifexists("SrcUsername", "Unknown")
| project-reorder SignInTime, UserPrincipalName, IPAddress, AppDisplayName, ClientAppUsed, DeviceDetail, LocationDetails, NetworkLocationDetails, RiskEventTypes, UserAgent, NetworkEventStartTime, NetworkEventEndTime, SrcIpAddr, DstIpAddr, DstPortNumber, Dvc, DvcHostname, SrcBytes, NetworkProtocol, SrcUsername
```

## Escalation Criteria
- Multi-Factor Authentication Interception activity observed on a privileged account or critical system.
- Activity follows or precedes other suspicious behaviour in the same investigation.
- Automated triage cannot confidently rule out malicious intent.

## False Positive Considerations
- Legitimate administrative or maintenance activity matching this pattern.
- Approved security testing or red team exercise.
- Known benign software producing similar telemetry.

Generated by SOC Response Atlas by Basyrix.

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• /api/techniques/T1111.json
• /api/recommendations/T1111.json
• /api/d3fend/T1111.json
• /api/mappings/T1111.json
• /api/confluence/T1111.md

Example curl:

curl https://atlas.basyrix.com/api/recommendations/T1111.json

Response:

{
  "technique_id": "T1111",
  "name": "Multi-Factor Authentication Interception",
  "priority": "high",
  "status": "draft",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "last_reviewed": "2026-07-23",
  "generated_by": "SOC Response Atlas by Basyrix",
  "tactics": [
    "Credential Access"
  ],
  "platforms": [
    "Linux",
    "macOS",
    "Windows"
  ],
  "summary": "Adversaries may target multi-factor authentication (MFA) mechanisms, (i.e., smart cards, token generators, etc.) to gain access to credentials that can be used to access systems, services, and network resources. Use of MFA is recommended and provides a higher level of security than usernames and passwords alone, but organizations should be aware of techniques that could be used to intercept and bypass these security mechanisms...",
  "soc_recommendation": "Investigate Multi-Factor Authentication Interception activity in the context of Credential Access: confirm scope, affected host/identity, and whether it matches expected administrative behaviour before deciding this is benign.",
  "d3fend_mappings": [
    {
      "id": "D3-RH",
      "name": "Radiation Hardening",
      "relationship": "harden",
      "practical_action": "Apply Radiation Hardening to reduce this technique's viability before an incident occurs.",
      "tooling": [
        "Defender for Endpoint"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "D3-HCI",
      "name": "Hardware Component Inventory",
      "relationship": "model",
      "practical_action": "Use Hardware Component Inventory to establish a baseline that makes this technique's deviations easier to spot.",
      "tooling": [
        "Defender for Endpoint"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "investigation_steps": {
    "microsoft": [
      "Review Defender for Endpoint / Defender XDR alerts and timeline for the affected host or identity.",
      "Check Sentinel analytics rules and incidents correlated with this technique.",
      "Review Entra ID sign-in and audit logs if the technique involves an identity or cloud resource."
    ],
    "generic": [
      "Confirm whether the observed multi-factor authentication interception activity matches expected administrative or application behaviour.",
      "Identify the host, account, or resource where the activity occurred and its business criticality.",
      "Check for related alerts before and after this activity to reconstruct the broader intrusion timeline.",
      "Real detection reference: \"GWorkspace - Two-step authentification disabled for a user\" -- Triggers on two-step authentification disabled for a user.'"
    ]
  },
  "evidence_to_collect": [
    "Host or resource affected",
    "Account or identity involved",
    "Timestamp of the activity",
    "Related process, file, or network artifact",
    "Any preceding or follow-on alerts"
  ],
  "response_actions": [
    {
      "name": "Contain the affected host or account",
      "category": "Containment",
      "risk": "Medium",
      "automation_safe": false,
      "approval_required": true,
      "tool": "Defender for Endpoint / Entra ID",
      "notes": "Requires approval -- confirm malicious intent before isolating a host or disabling an account."
    },
    {
      "name": "Collect and preserve evidence",
      "category": "Investigation",
      "risk": "Low",
      "automation_safe": true,
      "approval_required": false,
      "tool": "Defender for Endpoint",
      "notes": "Safe -- read-only evidence collection."
    }
  ],
  "queries": {
    "kql": [
      {
        "name": "c8cc02d0-5da6-11ec-bf63-0242ac130002 — GWorkspace - Two-step authentification disabled for a user",
        "description": "Triggers on two-step authentification disabled for a user.' (Source: Microsoft's official Azure-Sentinel Detections (MIT licensed).)",
        "query": "GWorkspaceActivityReports \n| where EventMessage =~ 'TURN_OFF_2_STEP_VERIFICATION'\n| extend AccountCustomEntity = ActorEmail"
      },
      {
        "name": "16daa67c-b137-48dc-8eb7-76598a44791a — Possible AiTM Phishing Attempt Against Microsoft Entra ID",
        "description": "Threat actors may attempt to phish users in order to hijack a users sign-in session, and skip the authentication process even if the user had enabled multifactor authentication (MFA) by stealing and replaying stolen credentials and session cookies. This detection looks for successful Microsoft Entra ID sign ins that had a high risk profile, indicating it had suspicious characteristics such as an unusual location, ISP, user agent, or use of anonymizer services. It then looks for a network connection to the IP address that made the sign in immediately before the sign in, that may indicate a user connecting to a phishing site at that IP address and having their authentication session hijacked. Ref: https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/07/12/from-cookie-theft-to-bec-attackers-use-aitm-phishing-sites-as-entry-point-to-further-financial-fraud/' (Source: Microsoft's official Azure-Sentinel Detections (MIT licensed).)",
        "query": "let time_threshold = 10m;\nlet RiskySignins = materialize (SigninLogs\n| where TimeGenerated > ago(1d)\n| where ResultType == 0\n| where RiskLevelDuringSignIn =~ \"high\" or RiskLevelAggregated =~ \"high\"\n| extend SignInTime = TimeGenerated, Name=split(UserPrincipalName, \"@\")[0], UPNSuffix=split(UserPrincipalName, \"@\")[1]);\nlet ips = todynamic(toscalar(RiskySignins | summarize make_list(IPAddress)));\nRiskySignins\n| join kind=inner (_Im_WebSession(starttime=ago(1d), ipaddr_has_any_prefix=ips, eventresult=\"Success\", pack=True))\non $left.IPAddress == $right.DstIpAddr\n| where EventStartTime < TimeGenerated\n| extend TimeDelta = TimeGenerated - EventStartTime\n| where TimeDelta <= time_threshold\n| extend NetworkEventStartTime = EventStartTime, NetworkEventEndTime = EventEndTime\n| extend SrcUsername = column_ifexists(\"SrcUsername\", \"Unknown\")\n| project-reorder SignInTime, UserPrincipalName, IPAddress, AppDisplayName, ClientAppUsed, DeviceDetail, LocationDetails, NetworkLocationDetails, RiskEventTypes, UserAgent, NetworkEventStartTime, NetworkEventEndTime, SrcIpAddr, DstIpAddr, DstPortNumber, Dvc, DvcHostname, SrcBytes, NetworkProtocol, SrcUsername"
      }
    ],
    "spl": [],
    "esql": [
      {
        "name": "3805c3dc-f82c-4f8d-891e-63c24d3102b0 — Attempted Bypass of Okta MFA",
        "description": "(KUERY) Detects attempts to bypass Okta multi-factor authentication (MFA). An adversary may attempt to bypass the Okta MFA policies configured for an organization in order to obtain unauthorized access to an application. (Source: Elastic's official detection-rules repository (Elastic License v2).)",
        "query": "data_stream.dataset:okta.system and event.action:user.mfa.attempt_bypass"
      }
    ]
  },
  "automation": {
    "safe": [
      "Add recommendation as Sentinel incident comment.",
      "Run enrichment queries.",
      "Create ServiceNow SecOps task."
    ],
    "approval_required": [
      "Contain or disable the affected host/account.",
      "Any change to production configuration."
    ]
  },
  "escalation_criteria": [
    "Multi-Factor Authentication Interception activity observed on a privileged account or critical system.",
    "Activity follows or precedes other suspicious behaviour in the same investigation.",
    "Automated triage cannot confidently rule out malicious intent."
  ],
  "false_positive_considerations": [
    "Legitimate administrative or maintenance activity matching this pattern.",
    "Approved security testing or red team exercise.",
    "Known benign software producing similar telemetry."
  ],
  "confluence": {
    "title": "T1111 - Multi-Factor Authentication Interception Response Guidance",
    "labels": [
      "mitre",
      "attack",
      "d3fend",
      "secops",
      "basyrix"
    ],
    "sections": [
      "summary",
      "d3fend_mappings",
      "investigation_steps",
      "response_actions",
      "queries",
      "automation",
      "escalation_criteria",
      "false_positive_considerations"
    ]
  }
}