Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Compromised credentials may be used to bypass access controls placed on various resources on systems within the network and may even be used for persistent access to remote systems and externally available services, such as VPNs, Outlook Web Access, network devices, and remote desktop.(Citation: volexity_0day_sophos_FW) Compromised credentials may also grant an adversary increased privilege to specific systems or access to restricted areas of the network. Adversaries may choose not to use malware or tools in conjunction with the legitimate access those credentials provide to make it harder to detect their presence.
In some cases, adversaries may abuse inactive accounts: for example, those belonging to individuals who are no longer part of an organization. Using these accounts may allow the adversary to evade detection, as the original account user will not be present to identify any anomalous activity taking place on their account.(Citation: CISA MFA PrintNightmare)
The overlap of permissions for local, domain, and cloud accounts across a network of systems is of concern because the adversary may be able to pivot across accounts and systems to reach a high level of access (i.e., domain or enterprise administrator) to bypass access controls set within the enterprise.(Citation: TechNet Credential Theft)
View in MITRE ATT&CK®| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| action.hacking.variety.Backdoor | Hacking action that creates a backdoor for use. | related-to | T1078 | Valid Accounts | |
| action.hacking.variety.Use of stolen creds | Use of stolen or default authentication credentials (including credential stuffing) | related-to | T1078 | Valid Accounts | |
| action.hacking.vector.Backdoor | Hacking actions taken through a backdoor. C2 is only used by malware. | related-to | T1078 | Valid Accounts | |
| amazon_cognito | Amazon Cognito | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
Comments
This control provides partial protection for one of this technique's sub-techniques and a few of its procedure examples resulting in an overall Minimal protection score.
References
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| amazon_guardduty | Amazon GuardDuty | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
Comments
GuardDuty implements a finding that flags occurrences unattended behavior from an IAM User in the Account.
PenTest:IAMUser/KaliLinux, PenTest:IAMUser/ParrotLinux, PenTest:IAMUser/PentooLinux, Policy:IAMUser/RootCredentialUsage, PrivilegeEscalation:IAMUser/AdministrativePermissions, UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/ConsoleLogin, UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/ConsoleLoginSuccess.B, UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/MaliciousIPCaller, UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/MaliciousIPCaller.Custom, UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/TorIPCaller, Policy:S3/AccountBlockPublicAccessDisabled, Policy:S3/BucketAnonymousAccessGranted, Policy:S3/BucketBlockPublicAccessDisabled, Policy:S3/BucketPublicAccessGranted, CredentialAccess:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior, DefenseEvasion:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior, Discovery:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior, Exfiltration:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior, Impact:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior, Persistence:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior, Recon:IAMUser/MaliciousIPCaller, Recon:IAMUser/MaliciousIPCaller.Custom, UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/InstanceCredentialExfiltration
References
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| aws_config | AWS Config | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
Comments
This control provides significant coverage for one of this technique's sub-techniques, resulting in an overall score of Minimal.
References
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| aws_identity_and_access_management | AWS Identity and Access Management | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
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| aws_identity_and_access_management | AWS Identity and Access Management | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
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| aws_iot_device_defender | AWS IoT Device Defender | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
Comments
This control provides partial detection capability for one of this technique's sub-techniques and a few of its procedure examples resulting in an overall Minimal protection score.
References
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| aws_iot_device_defender | AWS IoT Device Defender | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
Comments
This control provides partial protection for one of this technique's sub-techniques and a few of its procedure examples resulting in an overall Minimal protection score.
References
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| aws_organizations | AWS Organizations | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
Comments
This control may protect against malicious use of cloud accounts but may not mitigate exploitation of local, domain, or default accounts present within deployed resources.
References
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| aws_security_hub | AWS Security Hub | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
Comments
AWS Security Hub detects suspicious activity by AWS accounts which could indicate valid accounts being leveraged by an adversary. AWS Security Hub provides these detections with the following managed insights.
AWS principals with suspicious access key activity Credentials that may have leaked AWS resources with unauthorized access attempts IAM users with suspicious activity
AWS Security Hub also performs checks from the AWS Foundations CIS Benchmark and PCI-DSS security standard that, if implemented, would help towards detecting the misuse of valid accounts. AWS Security Hub provides these detections with the following checks.
3.1 Ensure a log metric filter and alarm exist for unauthorized API calls 3.2 Ensure a log metric filter and alarm exist for Management Console sign-in without MFA 3.3 Ensure a log metric filter and alarm exist for usage of "root" account 3.4 Ensure a log metric filter and alarm exist for IAM policy changes 3.6 Ensure a log metric filter and alarm exist for AWS Management Console authentication failures [PCI.CW.1] A log metric filter and alarm should exist for usage of the "root" user
By monitoring the root account, activity where accounts make unauthorized API calls, and changes to IAM permissions among other things, it may be possible to detect valid accounts that are being misused and are potentially compromised.
This is scored as Minimal because it only supports a subset of the sub-techniques.
References
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| aws_single_sign-on | AWS Single Sign-On | technique_scores | T1078 | Valid Accounts |
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| Technique ID | Technique Name | Number of Mappings |
|---|---|---|
| T1078.001 | Default Accounts | 2 |
| T1078.002 | Domain Accounts | 2 |
| T1078.004 | Cloud Accounts | 11 |
| T1078.003 | Local Accounts | 1 |