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Details and results of an automatic attack disruption action

  • Applies to: Microsoft Defender XDR

When an automatic attack disruption triggers in Microsoft Defender XDR, you can view the details about the risk and the containment status of compromised assets during and after the process. You can view the details on the incident page, which provides the full details of the attack and the up-to-date status of associated assets.

Review the incident graph

Microsoft Defender XDR automatic attack disruption is built-in in the incident view. Review the incident graph to get the entire attack story and assess the attack disruption impact and status.

The incident page includes the following information:

  • Disrupted incidents include a tag for 'Attack Disruption' and the specific threat type identified (for example, ransomware). If you subscribe to incident email notifications, these tags also appear in the emails.
  • A highlighted notification below the incident title indicating that the incident was disrupted.
  • Suspended users and contained devices appear with a label indicating their status.

To release a user account or a device from containment, select the contained asset and select release from containment for a device or enable user for a user account.

Track the actions in the Action center

The Action center (https://security.microsoft.com/action-center) brings together remediation and response actions across your devices, email & collaboration content, and identities. Actions listed include remediation actions that were taken automatically or manually. You can view automatic attack disruption actions in the Action center.

You can release the contained assets, for example, enable a blocked user account or release a device from containment, from the action details pane. You can release the contained assets after you mitigate the risk and complete the investigation of an incident. For more information about the action center, see Action center.

Tip

Do you want to learn more? Engage with the Microsoft Security community in our Tech Community: Microsoft Defender XDR Tech Community.

Track the actions in advanced hunting

You can use specific queries in advanced hunting to track contain device or user, and disable user account actions.

Containment in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint prevents further threat actor activity by blocking communication from contained entities. In advanced hunting, the DeviceEvents table logs block actions that result from containment, not the initial containment action itself:

  • Device-derived block actions - These events indicate activity (such as network communication) that was blocked because the device was contained:

    DeviceEvents
| where ActionType contains "ContainedDevice"

  • User-derived block actions - These events indicate activity (such as sign-in or resource access attempts) that was blocked because the user was contained:

    DeviceEvents
| where ActionType contains "ContainedUser"

Hunt for disable user account actions

Attack disruption uses the remediation action capability of Microsoft Defender for Identity to disable accounts. By default, Microsoft Defender for Identity uses the LocalSystem account of the domain controller for all remediation actions.

The following query looks for events where a domain controller disabled user accounts. This query also returns user accounts disabled by automatic attack disruption by triggering account disable in Microsoft Defender XDR manually:

let AllDomainControllers =
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where TimeGenerated > ago(7d)
| where LocalPort == 88
| where LocalIPType == "FourToSixMapping"
| extend DCDevicename = tostring(split(DeviceName,".")[0])
| distinct DCDevicename;
IdentityDirectoryEvents
| where TimeGenerated > ago(90d)
| where ActionType == "Account disabled"
| where Application == "Active Directory"
| extend ACTOR_DEVICE = tolower(tostring(AdditionalFields.["ACTOR.DEVICE"]))
| where isnotempty( ACTOR_DEVICE)
| where ACTOR_DEVICE in (AllDomainControllers)
| project TimeGenerated, TargetAccountUpn, ACTOR_DEVICE

The preceding query was adapted from a Microsoft Defender for Identity - Attack Disruption query.

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