Forge Missions
SOC investigations: triage a queue, hunt, and prove your conclusion.
What is in it
For soc lead, mssp delivery manager — make analysts accurate and fast on work that looks like their own.
- Alert queue with innocent lookalikes, so closing everything scores badly
- SIEM, endpoint, case service and the wire all reading one estate
- Dwell time, containment time and SLA clocks scored, not just logged
- Cases mapped to ATT&CK from detections that actually fired
What it is not
- Simulated tool surfaces, not a licensed vendor console
- Does not validate your production SIEM or EDR deployment
Forge Missions against the field
15 capabilities that matter for this purchase, next to the platforms a buyer shortlists in this lane: LetsDefend, TryHackMe SOC Simulator, Cyberbit, HTB Threat Range.
- The alert queue, the SIEM, the endpoint and the case service all read one estate, so an analyst can corroborate across tools instead of reading a transcript.
- The queue is salted with innocent lookalikes, so closing everything scores badly.
- Every alert opens a real case scoped to that scenario's own estate, never a shared global inbox.
| What you need | Forge MissionsIncluded in the platform | HTB | THM | Cyberbit | LetsDefend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOC investigation exercise | Yes See it live | Hack The Box: Documented for SOC investigation exercise | TryHackMe: Documented for SOC investigation exercise | Cyberbit: Documented for SOC investigation exercise | LetsDefend: Documented for SOC investigation exercise |
| Alert triage with true and false positive decisions | Yes See it live Every case ships with innocent lookalikes so closing everything scores badly. | Hack The Box: Documented for Alert triage with true and false positive decisions | TryHackMe: Documented for Alert triage with true and false positive decisions | Cyberbit: Limited for Alert triage with true and false positive decisions | LetsDefend: Documented for Alert triage with true and false positive decisions |
| SIEM query and investigation practice | Yes See it live | Hack The Box: Documented for SIEM query and investigation practice | TryHackMe: Documented for SIEM query and investigation practice | Cyberbit: Documented for SIEM query and investigation practice | LetsDefend: Documented for SIEM query and investigation practice |
| Endpoint analysis and access | Yes See it live | Hack The Box: Documented for Endpoint analysis and access | TryHackMe: Limited for Endpoint analysis and access | Cyberbit: Documented for Endpoint analysis and access | LetsDefend: Documented for Endpoint analysis and access |
| Threat hunting kept separate from alert triage | Yes See it live | Hack The Box: Documented for Threat hunting kept separate from alert triage | TryHackMe: Documented for Threat hunting kept separate from alert triage | Cyberbit: Documented for Threat hunting kept separate from alert triage | LetsDefend: Documented for Threat hunting kept separate from alert triage |
| Investigation that crosses multiple tools | Yes See it live One estate behind SIEM, EDR, case service, network devices and the wire. | Hack The Box: Documented for Investigation that crosses multiple tools | TryHackMe: Documented for Investigation that crosses multiple tools | Cyberbit: Documented for Investigation that crosses multiple tools | LetsDefend: Limited for Investigation that crosses multiple tools |
| Analyst report or evidence submission | Yes See it live | Hack The Box: Documented for Analyst report or evidence submission | TryHackMe: Documented for Analyst report or evidence submission | Cyberbit: Documented for Analyst report or evidence submission | LetsDefend: Limited for Analyst report or evidence submission |
| Measured investigation and response timing | Yes See it live Dwell time, containment time and SLA clocks are scored, not just recorded. | Hack The Box: Documented for Measured investigation and response timing | TryHackMe: Documented for Measured investigation and response timing | Cyberbit: Documented for Measured investigation and response timing | |
| Detection-engineering curriculum | Yes See it live | Hack The Box: Limited for Detection-engineering curriculum | TryHackMe: Documented for Detection-engineering curriculum | Cyberbit: Limited for Detection-engineering curriculum | LetsDefend: Documented for Detection-engineering curriculum |
| SOAR concepts and workflow training | Yes See it live | TryHackMe: Limited for SOAR concepts and workflow training | Cyberbit: Limited for SOAR concepts and workflow training | LetsDefend: Limited for SOAR concepts and workflow training | |
| Learner authors an executable SOAR playbookDeliberately stricter than the row above: a SOAR-looking screen is not a runtime. | Yes See it live Draft, run, fail, repair and rerun against the live estate, with an audit trail. | ||||
| Connector failure and replay debugger for automation | Yes See it live Deterministic integration faults with idempotent retries. Not established for any vendor in the research. | ||||
| Configuration changes alter the exercise | Yes See it live Firewall, routing and policy edits change what the wire and the SIEM then show. | Hack The Box: Documented for Configuration changes alter the exercise | TryHackMe: Limited for Configuration changes alter the exercise | Cyberbit: Documented for Configuration changes alter the exercise | LetsDefend: Limited for Configuration changes alter the exercise |
| Rogue access point owned by the estate, not scripted | Yes See it live | ||||
| Each scenario carries its own SIEM, alerts and case databaseNo shared global console: an alert raises a case on the estate it came from, and cannot leak into another team's exercise. | Yes See it live | TryHackMe: Limited for Each scenario carries its own SIEM, alerts and case database | Cyberbit: Limited for Each scenario carries its own SIEM, alerts and case database | LetsDefend: Limited for Each scenario carries its own SIEM, alerts and case database |
The run behind this line: One attachment to data out the door
An invoice attachment becomes a running implant, a scheduled task and a slow trickle of files leaving the estate.
Opponent: Access broker handing off to a data-theft crew. Shaped after Qakbot-style attachment delivery into hands-on-keyboard theft. Technique and zone identifiers are published by MITRE and ISA/IEC; the mapping is ours and is not an accreditation.
How it starts — the message delivered to the mailbox
- From
- Accounts Payable <ap@invoices-northwind.example>
- Subject
- Remittance advice 88421 — payment held pending confirmation
- Attachment
- Remittance_88421.docm (Word macro document)
- A macro document from outside the organization
- The sender domain is a near miss of the real supplier domain
- Urgency about a payment nobody in finance raised
Graded verdict: phish — T1566.001. Nothing here sends or resolves anywhere real.
The steps, and the zone each one crosses
| # | Tactic | ATT&CK | On the range | IEC 62443 zone |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Initial access | T1566.001 Phishing: spearphishing attachment | The macro document arrives and the user opens it. | Enterprise |
| 2 | Execution | T1204.002 User execution: malicious file | WINWORD spawns powershell with an encoded command. | Enterprise |
| 3 | Persistence | T1053.005 Scheduled task | A task named after a real update job re-runs the loader hourly. | Enterprise |
| 4 | Command and control | T1071.001 Application layer protocol: web | Regular small POSTs to a content-delivery lookalike. | Enterprise |
| 5 | Exfiltration | T1041 Exfiltration over C2 channel | Finance documents leave in chunks over the same channel. | Enterprise |
Zones in this run: Enterprise (Purdue level 4/5, via Internet mail and web egress); Identity (Purdue level 4, via LDAP and Kerberos to the domain controllers). How the zone model is used.
The alerts the SIEM raises from this run
Office application spawned a shell
WINWORD.EXE or EXCEL.EXE as the parent of powershell.exe or cmd.exe.
endpoint agent · stage 2 · LINE-MISSIONS-01 · T1204.002
Scheduled task registered outside a change window
Task registration by a user account with no change record.
endpoint agent · stage 3 · LINE-MISSIONS-02 · T1053.005
Beacon cadence to a young domain
Same-size POSTs at a regular interval with low jitter.
network sensor · stage 4 · LINE-MISSIONS-03 · T1071.001
What the case has to hold before it closes
- The delivered message, its hash and the mailbox it reached
- The process tree from the document to the loader
- The persistence artifact and where it lives
- The destination, the interval and the volume that left
Start learning this line
One attachment to data out the door, triaged from the estate's own alert queue.
A tick means the other platform's own documentation shows it. A question mark means we could not confirm it publicly — it is never a claim that they lack it. Every Forge yes opens the working screen rather than a screenshot.