DC0123: Application State
Application State represents the operational status and lifecycle context of a mobile application at a given point in time. This includes whether the application is running in the foreground or background, its activity state, recent user interaction, and transitions between lifecycle states.
Monitoring application state helps defenders identify suspicious behavior where an application performs sensitive actions while inactive, in the background, or without recent user interaction.
Application state is particularly useful when detecting malicious activity that occurs outside normal user-driven workflows.
Examples Android
- Application transitions from foreground to background - Application running as a background service - Application started via broadcast receiver - Application launched automatically after device boot
iOS
- Application entering active, inactive, or background state - Background task execution - Background fetch activity - Application wake events triggered by push notifications or system services
Data Collection Measures - Mobile EDR / MTD runtime monitoring - OS lifecycle event telemetry - Application runtime instrumentation - Mobile security platform behavioral monitoring
Security context for executives and security teams
DC0123: Application State describes Application State represents the operational status and lifecycle context of a mobile application at a given point in time. This includes whether the application is running in the foreground or background, its activity state, recent user interaction, and transitions between lifecycle states. Monitoring application state helps defenders identify suspicious behavior where an application performs sensitive actions while inactive, in the background, or without recent user interaction. Application state is particularly ...
Executive priority
DC0123: Application State is an official MITRE ATT&CK data component. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate DC0123: Application State by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (the platforms named in the official object), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether DC0123: Application State appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Application State
Application State represents the operational status and lifecycle context of a mobile application at a given point in time. This includes whether the application is running in the foreground or background, its activity state, recent user interaction, and transitions between lifecycle states.
Monitoring application state helps defenders identify suspicious behavior where an application performs sensitive actions while inactive, in the background, or without recent user interaction.
Application state is particularly useful when detecting malicious activity that occurs outside normal user-driven workflows.
Examples Android
- Application transitions from foreground to background - Application running as a background service - Application started via broadcast receiver - Application launched automatically after device boot
iOS
- Application entering active, inactive, or background state - Background task execution - Background fetch activity - Application wake events triggered by push notifications or system services
Data Collection Measures - Mobile EDR / MTD runtime monitoring - OS lifecycle event telemetry - Application runtime instrumentation - Mobile security platform behavioral monitoring
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
All related ATT&CK context
No relationships are available in the current normalized data for this object.
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Current bundle | a19521a64ac2… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | a19521a64ac2… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]mitre-attackDC0123Open source URL
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