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Azure DevOps Agent Pool Created Then Deleted
Description
'As well as adding build agents to an existing pool to execute malicious activity within a pipeline, an attacker could create a complete new agent pool and use this for execution.
Azure DevOps allows for the creation of agent pools with Azure hosted infrastructure or self-hosted infrastructure. Given the additional customizability of self-hosted agents this detection focuses on the creation of new self-hosted pools.
To further reduce false positive rates the detection looks for pools created and deleted relatively quickly (within 7 days by default), as an attacker is likely to remove a malicious pool once used in order to reduce/remove evidence of their activity.'
- Rule type
- Scheduled
- Version
- 1.0.5
- Declared status
- Available
- Query frequency
- 7d
- Query period
- 14d
- Trigger
- gt 0
Declared MITRE coverage
KQL query
Original query, unchanged.
let lookback = 14d;
let timewindow = 7d;
ADOAuditLogs
| where TimeGenerated > ago(lookback)
| where OperationName =~ "Library.AgentPoolCreated"
| extend AgentCloudId = tostring(Data.AgentCloudId)
| extend PoolType = iif(isnotempty(AgentCloudId), "Azure VMs", "Self Hosted")
// Comment this line out to include cloud pools as well
| where PoolType == "Self Hosted"
| extend AgentPoolName = tostring(Data.AgentPoolName)
| extend AgentPoolId = tostring(Data.AgentPoolId)
| extend IsHosted = tostring(Data.IsHosted)
| extend IsLegacy = tostring(Data.IsLegacy)
| extend timekey = bin(TimeGenerated, timewindow)
// Join only with pools deleted in the same window
| join (ADOAuditLogs
| where TimeGenerated > ago(lookback)
| where OperationName =~ "Library.AgentPoolDeleted"
| extend AgentPoolName = tostring(Data.AgentPoolName)
| extend AgentPoolId = tostring(Data.AgentPoolId)
| extend timekey = bin(TimeGenerated, timewindow)) on AgentPoolId, timekey
| project-reorder TimeGenerated, ActorUPN, UserAgent, IpAddress, AuthenticationMechanism, OperationName, AgentPoolName, IsHosted, IsLegacy, Data
| extend timestamp = TimeGenerated
| extend AccountName = tostring(split(ActorUPN, "@")[0]), AccountUPNSuffix = tostring(split(ActorUPN, "@")[1])
Declared entities
Related content
Links established from declared identifiers and solution manifests.
Source provenance
GitHubDisplayed values come from files in Azure/Azure-Sentinel. They describe the published template, not your workspace configuration.
- Commit
9800e51↗- Source identifier
acfdee3f-b794-404a-aeba-ef6a1fa08ad1
GSTEP / CATALOG TRACKING
Added to catalog : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC
Last change observed : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC