Valid accounts in cloud environments may allow adversaries to perform actions to achieve Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Cloud accounts are those created and configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration of resources within a cloud service provider or SaaS application. Cloud Accounts can exist solely in the cloud or be hybrid joined between on-premises systems and the cloud through federation with other identity sources such as Windows Active Directory. (Citation: AWS Identity Federation)(Citation: Google Federating GC)(Citation: Microsoft Deploying AD Federation)
Service or user accounts may be targeted by adversaries through Brute Force, Phishing, or various other means to gain access to the environment. Federated accounts may be a pathway for the adversary to affect both on-premises systems and cloud environments.
An adversary may create long lasting Additional Cloud Credentials on a compromised cloud account to maintain persistence in the environment. Such credentials may also be used to bypass security controls such as multi-factor authentication.
Cloud accounts may also be able to assume Temporary Elevated Cloud Access or other privileges through various means within the environment. Misconfigurations in role assignments or role assumption policies may allow an adversary to use these mechanisms to leverage permissions outside the intended scope of the account. Such over privileged accounts may be used to harvest sensitive data from online storage accounts and databases through Cloud API or other methods.
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