T1119 — Automated Collection

# T1119 - Automated Collection

## SOC Recommendation
Investigate Automated Collection activity in the context of Collection: 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 |
|---|---|---|
| File Analysis | Detect | Monitor for File Analysis indicators relevant to this technique. |
| File Encryption | Harden | Apply File Encryption to reduce this technique's viability before an incident occurs. |
| File Eviction | Evict | Use File Eviction to remove the adversary's foothold once this technique is confirmed. |
| Content Filtering | Isolate | Apply Content Filtering to contain the blast radius once this technique is observed. |

## 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
let firstRec = FortyTwoCrunchAPIProtection
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(5m) 
| project-away NonBlockingMode, SourcePort, DestinationPort, Query, ApiId, RequestHeader, ResponseHeader, Errors, EventType, Uuid
| where UriPath has "/api/properties?page=" and Status == 200;
let rateLimitCount = (toscalar(firstRec | count));
let recCount = iff((rateLimitCount > 100), 1, 0);
firstRec | top recCount by Timestamp desc;
```
```kql
ADOAuditLogs
// Look for known bad user agents
| where UserAgent has_any ("ADOKit")
| extend timestamp = TimeGenerated
| extend AccountName = tostring(split(ActorUPN, "@")[0]), AccountUPNSuffix = tostring(split(ActorUPN, "@")[1])
```
```kql
// High severity - Data Breach and Web Monitoring - Dark Web
let timeFrame = 5m;
CyfirmaDBWMDarkWebAlerts_CL
| where severity == 'Critical' and TimeGenerated between (ago(timeFrame) .. now())
| extend
    Description=description,
    FirstSeen=first_seen,
    LastSeen=last_seen,
    RiskScore=risk_score,
    AlertUID=alert_uid,
    UID=uid,
    AssetType=asset_type,
    AssetValue=signature,
    Impact=impact,
    Recommendation='',
    ProviderName='CYFIRMA',
    ProductName='DeCYFIR/DeTCT',
    AlertTitle=Alert_title
| project
    TimeGenerated,
    Description,
    RiskScore,
    FirstSeen,
    LastSeen,
    AlertUID,
    UID,
    AssetType,
    AssetValue,
    Impact,
    ProductName,
    ProviderName,
    AlertTitle
```

## Escalation Criteria
- Automated Collection 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.

Want to push this directly to Confluence? Upgrade to Basyrix Pro.

• /api/techniques/T1119.json
• /api/recommendations/T1119.json
• /api/d3fend/T1119.json
• /api/mappings/T1119.json
• /api/confluence/T1119.md

Example curl:

curl https://atlas.basyrix.com/api/recommendations/T1119.json

Response:

{
  "technique_id": "T1119",
  "name": "Automated Collection",
  "priority": "high",
  "status": "draft",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "last_reviewed": "2026-07-23",
  "generated_by": "SOC Response Atlas by Basyrix",
  "tactics": [
    "Collection"
  ],
  "platforms": [
    "IaaS",
    "Linux",
    "macOS",
    "Office Suite",
    "SaaS",
    "Windows"
  ],
  "summary": "Once established within a system or network, an adversary may use automated techniques for collecting internal data. Methods for performing this technique could include use of a [Command and Scripting Interpreter](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1059) to search for and copy information fitting set criteria such as file type, location, or name at specific time intervals...",
  "soc_recommendation": "Investigate Automated Collection activity in the context of Collection: confirm scope, affected host/identity, and whether it matches expected administrative behaviour before deciding this is benign.",
  "d3fend_mappings": [
    {
      "id": "D3-FA",
      "name": "File Analysis",
      "relationship": "detect",
      "practical_action": "Monitor for File Analysis indicators relevant to this technique.",
      "tooling": [
        "Defender for Endpoint"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "D3-FE",
      "name": "File Encryption",
      "relationship": "harden",
      "practical_action": "Apply File Encryption to reduce this technique's viability before an incident occurs.",
      "tooling": [
        "Defender for Endpoint"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "D3-FEV",
      "name": "File Eviction",
      "relationship": "evict",
      "practical_action": "Use File Eviction to remove the adversary's foothold once this technique is confirmed.",
      "tooling": [
        "Defender for Endpoint"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "D3-CF",
      "name": "Content Filtering",
      "relationship": "isolate",
      "practical_action": "Apply Content Filtering to contain the blast radius once this technique is observed.",
      "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 automated collection 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: \"API - API Scraping\" -- 42Crunch API protection against API scraping'"
    ]
  },
  "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": "d944d564-b6fa-470d-b5ab-41b341878c5e — API - API Scraping",
        "description": "42Crunch API protection against API scraping' (Source: Microsoft's official Azure-Sentinel Detections (MIT licensed).)",
        "query": "let firstRec = FortyTwoCrunchAPIProtection\n| where TimeGenerated >= ago(5m) \n| project-away NonBlockingMode, SourcePort, DestinationPort, Query, ApiId, RequestHeader, ResponseHeader, Errors, EventType, Uuid\n| where UriPath has \"/api/properties?page=\" and Status == 200;\nlet rateLimitCount = (toscalar(firstRec | count));\nlet recCount = iff((rateLimitCount > 100), 1, 0);\nfirstRec | top recCount by Timestamp desc;"
      },
      {
        "name": "bc71cf84-c02c-4c0a-a64c-306d84f9ff89 — Azure DevOps Audit Detection for known malicious tooling",
        "description": "Azure DevOps has been targeted over the years with a handful of toolkits. This detection will look for some common signs known for a few of these tools.' (Source: Microsoft's official Azure-Sentinel Detections (MIT licensed).)",
        "query": "ADOAuditLogs\n// Look for known bad user agents\n| where UserAgent has_any (\"ADOKit\")\n| extend timestamp = TimeGenerated\n| extend AccountName = tostring(split(ActorUPN, \"@\")[0]), AccountUPNSuffix = tostring(split(ActorUPN, \"@\")[1])"
      },
      {
        "name": "c3f1f55b-7e54-4416-8afc-7d7876b29b0f — CYFIRMA - Data Breach and Web Monitoring - Dark Web High Rule",
        "description": "\"Detects critical alerts from CYFIRMA related to sensitive data or credentials leaked on dark web forums. These events often indicate unauthorized access or compromise of enterprise systems, cloud environments, or identity platforms. Immediate investigation is required to assess breach scope and initiate mitigation, including credential resets, access reviews, and threat actor tracking.\" (Source: Microsoft's official Azure-Sentinel Detections (MIT licensed).)",
        "query": "// High severity - Data Breach and Web Monitoring - Dark Web\nlet timeFrame = 5m;\nCyfirmaDBWMDarkWebAlerts_CL\n| where severity == 'Critical' and TimeGenerated between (ago(timeFrame) .. now())\n| extend\n    Description=description,\n    FirstSeen=first_seen,\n    LastSeen=last_seen,\n    RiskScore=risk_score,\n    AlertUID=alert_uid,\n    UID=uid,\n    AssetType=asset_type,\n    AssetValue=signature,\n    Impact=impact,\n    Recommendation='',\n    ProviderName='CYFIRMA',\n    ProductName='DeCYFIR/DeTCT',\n    AlertTitle=Alert_title\n| project\n    TimeGenerated,\n    Description,\n    RiskScore,\n    FirstSeen,\n    LastSeen,\n    AlertUID,\n    UID,\n    AssetType,\n    AssetValue,\n    Impact,\n    ProductName,\n    ProviderName,\n    AlertTitle"
      }
    ],
    "spl": [],
    "esql": [
      {
        "name": "47fdd8e9-2f53-4648-afbf-0c6dd52f3ce5 — Potential Database Dumping Activity",
        "description": "(EQL) This rule detects the use of database dumping utilities to exfiltrate data from a database. Attackers may attempt to dump the database to a file on the system and then exfiltrate the file to a remote server. (Source: Elastic's official detection-rules repository (Elastic License v2).)",
        "query": "process where host.os.type == \"linux\" and event.type == \"start\" and\nevent.action in (\"exec\", \"exec_event\", \"start\", \"ProcessRollup2\") and\nprocess.name in (\"pg_dump\", \"pg_dumpall\", \"mysqldump\", \"mariadb-dump\", \"mongodump\")"
      },
      {
        "name": "deee5856-25ba-438d-ae53-09d66f41b127 — AWS EC2 Export Task",
        "description": "(KUERY) Identifies successful export tasks of EC2 instances via the APIs CreateInstanceExportTask, ExportImage, or CreateStoreImageTask. These exports can be used by administrators for legitimate VM migration or backup workflows however, an attacker with access to an EC2 instance or AWS credentials can export a VM or its image and then transfer it off-account for exfiltration of data. (Source: Elastic's official detection-rules repository (Elastic License v2).)",
        "query": "data_stream.dataset: \"aws.cloudtrail\" and \n    event.provider: \"ec2.amazonaws.com\" and \n    event.action: (\"CreateInstanceExportTask\" or \"ExportImage\" or \"CreateStoreImageTask\") and \n    event.outcome: \"success\""
      }
    ]
  },
  "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": [
    "Automated Collection 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": "T1119 - Automated Collection Response Guidance",
    "labels": [
      "mitre",
      "attack",
      "d3fend",
      "secops",
      "basyrix"
    ],
    "sections": [
      "summary",
      "d3fend_mappings",
      "investigation_steps",
      "response_actions",
      "queries",
      "automation",
      "escalation_criteria",
      "false_positive_considerations"
    ]
  }
}