Mission brief · X-101

Detection & automation engineer building the credential-harvest response

Detection / automation engineer

Business important

You are acting as

you, signed in to the automation platform as `eng.you` (build role, not the on-call responder)

How you got here

You are not on the console watching the queue. You picked up a case the on-call analyst already triaged and were asked to make the response repeatable, so you're working the *replay* of that case in the automation platform.

Your access

Automation platform (author + test)
Automation platform
- Edit playbooks
- Run against a replayed case
- Inspect run history and context paths
- Not yours: Act on production hosts
- Not yours: Approve your own consequential actions
Ticketing (read + work notes)
Ticketing / ITSM
- Read the originating case
- Attach run evidence to the case

What's at stake

The credential-harvest playbook and its incident layout

Owner: SOC manager — signs off before this runs unattended

Hard-coded values look fine on the case you built them against and silently target the wrong entity on the next one. Context paths are the difference.

Rules of engagement

You may act alone

Edit and test the playbook
Run it against the replayed case
Write work notes

Ask a human first

Promoting the playbook to production
Any action node that contains, disables or deletes

Where this sits in a real SOC

This lab grades automation design, not triage. The analyst who works the phish and the engineer who automates it are different seats — do the phishing triage lab if you want the triage half.

How much help do you want?

Objectives stay open and every step explains why it matters before it tells you what to run. Hints are free.

Graded case walkthrough

Open a lab as a live case and advance it one node at a time. The score beside each step is the lab rubric re-evaluated against what the engine actually did.

Lab

A credential-harvest incident lands in XSOAR and the work has to survive being reused tomorrow. Work it through the Work Plan and the War Room, driving every field from context paths instead of hard-coded values.

Range guide

Guided

Every step explains why it matters before it tells you what to do. Reasoning is free in guided mode.

Prove it

1. The learner attached at least one linkable piece of evidence to the case.
Why this step: The learner attached at least one linkable piece of evidence to the case. It carries 10 points on the investigation dimension.
2. Nothing was changed in the estate before evidence had been gathered.
Why this step: Nothing was changed in the estate before evidence had been gathered. It carries 10 points on the investigation dimension.
3. The lure domain was enriched to a malicious verdict before action.
Why this step: The lure domain was enriched to a malicious verdict before action. It carries 20 points on the investigation dimension.

Decide and act

1. The workflow reached a terminal success state on the graded run.
Why this step: The workflow reached a terminal success state on the graded run. It carries 20 points on the behavior dimension.
2. A reversible action passed through a human approval gate.
Why this step: A reversible action passed through a human approval gate. It carries 15 points on the safety dimension.
3. No non-idempotent operation was retried without an idempotency key.
Why this step: No non-idempotent operation was retried without an idempotency key. It carries 10 points on the efficiency dimension.
4. Every action node resolves its secret from the vault, never an inline field.
Why this step: Every action node resolves its secret from the vault, never an inline field. It carries 10 points on the configuration dimension.
5. No innocent asset in the alert batch was contained, disabled or revoked.
Why this step: No innocent asset in the alert batch was contained, disabled or revoked. It carries 15 points on the behavior dimension.
6. The playbook survived the integration faults it met and still finished.
Why this step: The playbook survived the integration faults it met and still finished. It carries 15 points on the configuration dimension.
7. Incident severity is bound to a context path, not typed in.
Why this step: Incident severity is bound to a context path, not typed in. It carries 20 points on the configuration dimension.

Write it up

1. The case carries an analyst closure note explaining the outcome.
Why this step: The case carries an analyst closure note explaining the outcome. It carries 10 points on the explanation dimension.

Your cases

No cases opened yet.