An adversary may add additional roles or permissions to an adversary-controlled cloud account to maintain persistent access to a tenant. For example, adversaries may update IAM policies in cloud-based environments or add a new global administrator in Office 365 environments.[1][2][3][4] With sufficient permissions, a compromised account can gain almost unlimited access to data and settings (including the ability to reset the passwords of other admins).[5][4]
This account modification may immediately follow Create Account or other malicious account activity. Adversaries may also modify existing Valid Accounts that they have compromised. This could lead to privilege escalation, particularly if the roles added allow for lateral movement to additional accounts.
For example, in AWS environments, an adversary with appropriate permissions may be able to use the CreatePolicyVersion API to define a new version of an IAM policy or the AttachUserPolicy API to attach an IAM policy with additional or distinct permissions to a compromised user account.[6]
In some cases, adversaries may add roles to adversary-controlled accounts outside the victim cloud tenant. This allows these external accounts to perform actions inside the victim tenant without requiring the adversary to Create Account or modify a victim-owned account.[7]
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| C0027 | C0027 |
During C0027, Scattered Spider used IAM manipulation to gain persistence and to assume or elevate privileges.[8] |
| G1004 | LAPSUS$ |
LAPSUS$ has added the global admin role to accounts they have created in the targeted organization's cloud instances.[9] |
| G1015 | Scattered Spider |
During C0027, Scattered Spider used IAM manipulation to gain persistence and to assume or elevate privileges.[8] Scattered Spider has also assigned user access admin roles in order to gain Tenant Root Group management permissions in Azure.[10] |
| C0024 | SolarWinds Compromise |
During the SolarWinds Compromise, APT29 granted |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1032 | Multi-factor Authentication |
Use multi-factor authentication for user and privileged accounts. |
| M1026 | Privileged Account Management |
Ensure that all accounts use the least privileges they require. In Azure AD environments, consider using Privileged Identity Management (PIM) to define roles that require two or more approvals before assignment to users.[12] |
| M1018 | User Account Management |
Ensure that low-privileged user accounts do not have permissions to add permissions to accounts or update IAM policies. |
| ID | Data Source | Data Component | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS0002 | User Account | User Account Modification |
Collect usage logs from cloud administrator accounts to identify unusual activity in the assignment of roles to those accounts. Monitor for accounts assigned to admin roles that go over a certain threshold of known admins. Monitor for updates to IAM policies and roles attached to user accounts. Analytic 1 - Unusual ActorPrincipalNames, unexpected role assignments to sensitive roles (e.g., Global Admin) Note: To detect the assignment of additional cloud roles using potentially hijacked accounts.
|