Suspicious Device Code Authentication via Microsoft Authentication Broker

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Priv Esc
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Defense Evasion
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Cred Access
- T1528Steal Application Access Token
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects sign-ins using the Microsoft Authentication Broker application together with an Android device user-agent associated with token theft. This activity matches the Russian device-code phishing operation that spoofed European security events to trick targets into authorizing attacker-controlled devices. Successful abuse grants long-lived refresh tokens and lets the actor register rogue devices which enables persistent access to victim identities.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1078.004 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Microsoft Entra Device Code Authentication Flow

Suspicious Salesforce Connected App OAuth Authorization from VPN Egress

Suspicious OAuth Device Code Sign-In to Authentication Broker via Tycoon 2FA

Suspicious OAuth Application Registration with Localhost Reply URL via Azure AD

Azure Audit Logs: Application URI Configuration Changes (AppAddress)

Suspicious Microsoft 365 OAuth Authorization to Visual Studio Code Client

Malicious AWS Cross-Account AssumeRole With Suspicious Session Names via CloudTrail (via aws)

Suspicious Okta SSO Access to Many Applications in Short Window

Suspicious M365 Password Spraying via Azure PowerShell AppId from Quad7 Botnet

Suspicious Device Code Authentication via Microsoft Authentication Broker

Pivot detection · T1078.004 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →