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Mapping the simulated attacks to MITRE ATT&CK

m365expertise·22 August 2026·7 min

Each of the 35 simulated attacks links directly to its MITRE ATT&CK technique. That single link turns a tool-specific scenario into a shared vocabulary — one a SOC, a red team and an auditor already speak — and makes a simulation result comparable with threat intelligence and detection coverage.

Why anchor scenarios to ATT&CK

A scenario named « consent phishing » is clear to the person who wrote it. A scenario tagged T1528 — Steal Application Access Token is clear to everyone: the SOC that hunts for it, the detection engineer who covers it, the CTI analyst who tracks the actors who use it. ATT&CK is the common reference layer, so anchoring each simulated attack to its technique lets a simulation result plug straight into work that already exists.

In EntraGUARD, clicking the name of an attack opens its ATT&CK technique page directly. There is no internal, hand-written summary to maintain and go stale — the authoritative description lives at MITRE, and the tool points to it.

The mapping, by phase

The technique IDs below are the ones each scenario points to. Some scenarios share a technique — several cloud-account abuses legitimately map to the same ATT&CK entry — and that is expected: ATT&CK describes behaviour, and different weaknesses can enable the same behaviour.

AttackTechnique
AiTM / session theftT1557 — Adversary-in-the-Middle
Device code phishingT1566.002 — Spearphishing Link
Password sprayT1110.003 — Password Spraying
Legacy authenticationT1078.004 — Cloud Accounts
MFA fatigueT1621 — MFA Request Generation
Consent phishing / permissive user consent / no admin consent workflow / dangerous redirect URIsT1528 — Steal Application Access Token
Shadow admin / dangerous app permissions / role-assignable groups / standing privileged roles / tenant-takeover Graph permissionsT1098.003 — Additional Cloud Roles
Service principal & risky application credentials / standing TAPT1098.001 — Additional Cloud Credentials
Break-glass abuse / stale admins / no MFA / privileged guests / unhandled risky usersT1078.004 — Cloud Accounts
Guest surface / open guest invitationsT1136.003 — Create Cloud Account
Conditional Access bypass / no Conditional Access / no baseline protectionT1556 — Modify Authentication Process (incl. .009 Conditional Access)
Cross-tenant / sync abuseT1199 — Trusted Relationship
Golden SAML / federationT1606.002 — SAML Tokens
Rogue external identity providerT1556.007 — Hybrid Identity
Ownerless applications / user app registration / exploitable dynamic groupsT1098 — Account Manipulation
Anonymous SharePoint / OneDrive sharingT1213 — Data from Information Repositories

What the mapping is — and isn't

The link points to the technique that best describes the scenario's behaviour. It is a navigation aid and a shared label, not a claim of full ATT&CK coverage: the simulator does not implement every procedure under a technique, and one tenant weakness can map to a technique that also has procedures the simulator does not test. Read the mapping as « this is the ATT&CK behaviour this path belongs to », then use MITRE's page for the full procedure list and the detection and mitigation guidance.

Verify the technique IDs against MITRE. ATT&CK evolves — sub-techniques get renumbered and split. The IDs above are the mapping the tool ships with; if one no longer resolves on attack.mitre.org, it is the mapping to update, not the finding.

Using it in a SOC or a report

  • Detection coverage. Take the techniques behind your viable paths and check them against your detection content. A viable path with no matching detection is a double gap — exposed and blind.
  • Threat alignment. If your CTI flags an actor using T1557 or T1606.002 against your sector, the simulator tells you immediately whether that exact path is viable on your tenant.
  • Reporting. A findings table with an ATT&CK column reads as credible to a technical audience and maps cleanly onto a defender's existing framework — no translation needed.
Applies to Entra ID & M365
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