| ID | Name |
|---|---|
| T1136.001 | Local Account |
| T1136.002 | Domain Account |
| T1136.003 | Cloud Account |
Adversaries may create a cloud account to maintain access to victim systems. With a sufficient level of access, such accounts may be used to establish secondary credentialed access that does not require persistent remote access tools to be deployed on the system.[1][2][3][4][5]
In addition to user accounts, cloud accounts may be associated with services. Cloud providers handle the concept of service accounts in different ways. In Azure, service accounts include service principals and managed identities, which can be linked to various resources such as OAuth applications, serverless functions, and virtual machines in order to grant those resources permissions to perform various activities in the environment.[6] In GCP, service accounts can also be linked to specific resources, as well as be impersonated by other accounts for Temporary Elevated Cloud Access.[7] While AWS has no specific concept of service accounts, resources can be directly granted permission to assume roles.[8][9]
Adversaries may create accounts that only have access to specific cloud services, which can reduce the chance of detection.
Once an adversary has created a cloud account, they can then manipulate that account to ensure persistence and allow access to additional resources - for example, by adding Additional Cloud Credentials or assigning Additional Cloud Roles.
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| S0677 | AADInternals |
AADInternals can create new Azure AD users.[10] |
| G0016 | APT29 | |
| G1004 | LAPSUS$ |
LAPSUS$ has created global admin accounts in the targeted organization's cloud instances to gain persistence.[12] |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1032 | Multi-factor Authentication |
Use multi-factor authentication for user and privileged accounts. |
| M1030 | Network Segmentation |
Configure access controls and firewalls to limit access to critical systems and domain controllers. Most cloud environments support separate virtual private cloud (VPC) instances that enable further segmentation of cloud systems. |
| M1026 | Privileged Account Management |
Limit the number of accounts with permissions to create other accounts. Do not allow privileged accounts to be used for day-to-day operations that may expose them to potential adversaries on unprivileged systems. |
| ID | Data Source | Data Component | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS0002 | User Account | User Account Creation |
Monitor for newly constructed user accounts through the collection of usage logs from cloud user and administrator accounts to identify unusual activity in the creation of new accounts, such as accounts that do not follow specified naming conventions or accounts created by unapproved users or sources.[13] Monitor for newly created admin accounts that go over a certain threshold of known admins. Analytic 1 - Unusual ActorPrincipalNames, creation of accounts with suspicious properties
|