View Audit Logs - Document Details

This page contains Windows bias

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This page is part of the Azure documentation. It contains code examples and configuration instructions for working with Azure services.

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Bias Analysis

Detected Bias Types

powershell_heavy

missing_linux_example

windows_tools

Summary

The documentation provides only a PowerShell script example for programmatically accessing audit logs via the Microsoft Entra reporting API. There are no equivalent examples using Linux-native tools (such as curl, wget, or Python), nor are there references to Bash or shell scripting. The script assumes familiarity with PowerShell, which is primarily a Windows tool, and suggests using Azure Cloud Shell (which does support PowerShell, but Bash is also available). This creates a bias toward Windows users and may hinder Linux users or those preferring cross-platform scripting.

Recommendations

Provide equivalent examples using Bash shell scripting with curl or wget to demonstrate how to access the API and process results on Linux or macOS.
Include a Python example for querying the Microsoft Graph API, as Python is cross-platform and widely used.
Explicitly mention that the API can be accessed from any platform and that PowerShell is just one option.
Add a note or section on using Azure CLI or other cross-platform tools where applicable.
Reorder or parallelize examples so that Windows and Linux approaches are presented together, or alternate which comes first.

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Scan History

Date	Scan	Status	Result
2026-01-14 00:00	#250	in_progress	Biased
2026-01-13 00:00	#246	completed	Biased
2026-01-12 00:00	#243	cancelled	Biased
2026-01-11 00:00	#240	completed	Biased
2026-01-10 00:00	#237	completed	Biased
2026-01-09 00:34	#234	completed	Biased
2026-01-08 00:53	#231	completed	Clean
2026-01-08 00:00	#228	cancelled	Clean
2026-01-06 18:15	#225	cancelled	Clean
2025-09-16 00:00	#113	completed	Biased
2025-09-15 00:00	#112	completed	Biased
2025-09-14 00:00	#111	completed	Biased
2025-09-13 00:00	#110	completed	Biased
2025-09-12 00:00	#109	completed	Biased
2025-09-11 00:00	#108	completed	Biased
2025-09-09 00:00	#106	completed	Biased
2025-08-14 00:01	#80	cancelled	Biased
2025-07-13 21:25	#47	cancelled	Clean
2025-07-13 21:17	#46	cancelled	Clean
2025-07-13 20:48	#44	cancelled	Biased
2025-07-13 20:32	#43	cancelled	Biased
2025-07-09 13:09	#3	cancelled	Clean
2025-07-08 04:23	#2	cancelled	Biased

Flagged Code Snippets

# This script requires an application registration that's granted Microsoft Graph API permission
# https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/active-directory-b2c/microsoft-graph-get-started

# Constants
$ClientID       = "your-client-application-id-here"       # Insert your application's client ID, a GUID
$ClientSecret   = "your-client-application-secret-here"   # Insert your application's client secret value
$tenantdomain   = "your-b2c-tenant.onmicrosoft.com"       # Insert your Azure AD B2C tenant domain name

$loginURL       = "https://login.microsoftonline.com"
$resource       = "https://graph.microsoft.com"           # Microsoft Graph API resource URI
$7daysago       = "{0:s}" -f (get-date).AddDays(-7) + "Z" # Use 'AddMinutes(-5)' to decrement minutes, for example
Write-Output "Searching for events starting $7daysago"

# Create HTTP header, get an OAuth2 access token based on client id, secret and tenant domain
$body       = @{grant_type="client_credentials";resource=$resource;client_id=$ClientID;client_secret=$ClientSecret}
$oauth      = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri $loginURL/$tenantdomain/oauth2/token?api-version=1.0 -Body $body

# Parse audit report items, save output to file(s): auditX.json, where X = 0 through n for number of nextLink pages
if ($oauth.access_token -ne $null) {
    $i=0
    $headerParams = @{'Authorization'="$($oauth.token_type) $($oauth.access_token)"}
    $url = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/auditLogs/directoryAudits?`$filter=loggedByService eq 'B2C' and activityDateTime gt  " + $7daysago

    # loop through each query page (1 through n)
    Do {
        # display each event on the console window
        Write-Output "Fetching data using Uri: $url"
        $myReport = (Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Headers $headerParams -Uri $url)
        foreach ($event in ($myReport.Content | ConvertFrom-Json).value) {
            Write-Output ($event | ConvertTo-Json)
        }

        # save the query page to an output file
        Write-Output "Save the output to a file audit$i.json"
        $myReport.Content | Out-File -FilePath audit$i.json -Force
        $url = ($myReport.Content | ConvertFrom-Json).'@odata.nextLink'
        $i = $i+1
    } while($url -ne $null)
} else {
    Write-Host "ERROR: No Access Token"
}