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.(Citation: Microsoft O365 Admin Roles)(Citation: Microsoft Support O365 Add Another Admin, October 2019)(Citation: AWS Create IAM User)(Citation: GCP Create Cloud Identity Users)(Citation: Microsoft Azure AD Users)
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.
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