T1078 Valid Accounts

This diagnostic statement implements security controls and restrictions for remote user access to systems. Remote user access control involves managing and securing how users remotely access systems, such as through encrypted connections and account use policies, which help prevent adversary access.

This diagnostic statement implements mechanisms and tools to mitigate potential misuse of privileged users and accounts. Continuous monitoring of role and attribute assignments and activity is essential to prevent and detect unauthorized access or misuse.

This diagnostic statement provides for secure system development, which includes ensuring that applications do not store sensitive data or valid account credentials insecurely (e.g., plaintext credentials in code, published credentials in repositories, or credentials in public cloud storage).

This diagnostic statement protects against Valid Accounts through the use of privileged account management and the use of multi-factor authentication.

This diagnostic statement protects against Valid Accounts through the use of privileged account management. Employing auditing, privilege access management, and just in time access protects against adversaries trying to obtain illicit access to critical systems.

This diagnostic statement provides protection from Valid Accounts through the implementation of privileged account management controls to limit account access. Employing limitations to specific accounts, provisioning accounts, access control mechanisms, and auditing the attribution logs provides protection against adversaries attempting to use existing accounts.

This diagnostic statement protects against Valid Accounts through the use of revocation of keys and key management. Employing key protection strategies for key material used as part of multi-factor authentication for valid accounts, limitations to specific accounts along with access control mechanisms provides protection against adversaries attempting to use valid accounts.

This diagnostic statement describes how the organization establishes security standards based on industry guidelines to institute strict controls over service account (i.e., accounts used by systems to access other systems).

This diagnostic statement describes how the organization ensures users are identified and authenticated before accessing systems, applications, and hardware, with logical access controls permitting access only to authorized individuals with legitimate business needs. Logical access controls in relation to systems can refer to the use of MFA, user account management, and other role-based access control mechanisms to enforce policies for authentication and authorization of user accounts.

This diagnostic statement describes how the organization implement appropriate authentication requirements, including selecting mechanisms based on risk, utilizing multi-factor authentication where necessary, and safeguarding the storage of authenticators like pins and passwords to protect sensitive access credentials.

This diagnostic statement includes implementation of controls for third-party access to an organization’s systems. Conditional access policies can be used to block logins from non-compliant devices or from outside defined IP ranges.

This diagnostic statement protects against Valid Accounts through the use of hardened access control policies, secure defaults, password complexity requirements, multifactor authentication requirements, and removal of terminated accounts.

This diagnostic statement protects against Valid Accounts through the use of DevSecOps, secure development lifecycle, and application developer guidance. Exploitable weaknesses can be mitigated through secure code, reduced vulnerabilities, and secure design principles.

CVE-2019-13608 is a an XML External Entity (XXE) processing vulnerability that may allow an unauthenticated attacker to retrieve potentially sensitive information.

Advantive VeraCore versions prior to 2024.4.2.1 contain an unrestricted file upload flaw that can lead to remote code execution and full system compromise. This attack requires valid credentials for VeraCore.

This vulnerability is exploited through a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) weakness in the SAML component of Ivanti Connect Secure, Ivanti Policy Secure, and Ivanti Neurons for ZTA. Attackers leverage this vulnerability to gain unauthorized access by sending a crafted request to the /dana-ws/saml.ws endpoint, which can be accessed without authentication. This manipulation allows attackers to interact with internal services, potentially enabling further exploitation by chaining with other vulnerabilities.

This vulnerability is exploited by a remote attacker who forges a session cookie leveraging user_id or _user_id set to 1 in order to log in as an administrator. A successful exploitation could allow the adversary to gain authenticated access and gain access to unauthorized resources.

This vulnerability is exploited by an authenticated, local attacker in order to execute arbitrary code with root-level privileges by copying a crafted file to the disk0: file system. This is possible due to improper validation of a file when it is read from system flash memory. This vulnerability is associated with an attack campaign named ArcaneDoor in early 2024. This campaign targeted this vulnerability among others to implant malware, execute commands, and potentially exfiltrate data from compromised devices.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary that has gained local access to the victim system. If successfully exploited, the adversary would gain full SYSTEM level privileges. This CVE has been leveraged in the wild by Storm-0506 involved deploying Black Basta ransomware, initiated through a Qakbot infection and exploiting a Windows vulnerability (CVE-2023-28252) to gain elevated privileges. The attackers used tools like Cobalt Strike and Pypykatz for credential theft and lateral movement, eventually creating an "ESX Admins" group to encrypt the ESXi file system and disrupt hosted VMs.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary that has gained local access to the victim system. If successfully exploited, the adversary would gain limited SYSTEM level privileges. This vulnerability has been exploited in the wild; however, no technical information has been published related to the exploitation. Microsoft has identified that successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to win a race condition.

This vulnerability is exploited when an adversary sends a specially-crafted email which can result in the disclosure of authentication information that an adversary can replay to gain access to systems.

This vulnerability is exploited by an authenticated adversary. It is identified as requiring local access via Microsoft; however, other reports have identified remote, authenticated adversaries can exploit this vulnerability. A successful exploitation would grant an attacker SYSTEM level privileges. This vulnerability has been exploited in the wild; however, technical details of how this was leveraged in an attack has not been publicly shared.

This vulnerability is exploited by an attacker who has obtained local access with low privileges on the target system. The vulnerability lies in the Cryptography API: Next Generation (CNG) Key Isolation Service, specifically due to a memory overflow issue. This vulnerability has been exploited by threat actors to gain elevated privileges on Windows systems. Attackers leveraged this flaw to execute arbitrary commands with SYSTEM privileges, allowing them to manipulate system processes and deploy additional malware to perform further malicious activities. The exploit in question is actively being used in the wild. It involves exploiting the memory overflow in the CNG Key Isolation Service to gain SYSTEM-level access. Once the vulnerability is exploited, attackers can manipulate system processes and access sensitive information stored in the service, such as cryptographic keys. This allows them to achieve their objectives, such as executing code with elevated privileges and compromising the security of the affected system.

This vulnerability is exploited by an attacker who has obtained access to manipulate the Print Spooler service on the target system. The vulnerability lies in the Print Spooler, specifically involving XML manipulation and path traversal to a writable path containing a modified version of the `prntvpt.dll` file. This vulnerability has been exploited by threat actors to load unauthorized code on Windows systems. Attackers leveraged this flaw to execute arbitrary code, allowing them to manipulate system processes and potentially deploy additional malware or perform further malicious activities. The exploit in question is actively being used in the wild. It involves exploiting the path traversal vulnerability to load a malicious DLL by manipulating the Print Spooler service. Once the vulnerability is exploited, attackers can bypass impersonation controls to load untrusted resources, thereby executing arbitrary code with elevated privileges.

This vulnerability is exploited by an attacker who has obtained access to the target system. The vulnerability lies in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver, specifically due to improper bounds checking on the `cbSymbolZone` field in the Base Record Header for the base log file (BLF). This vulnerability has been exploited by threat actors to gain elevated privileges on Windows systems. Attackers leveraged this flaw to execute arbitrary system commands, allowing them to manipulate system processes and potentially deploy additional malware or perform further malicious activities. The exploit in question is actively being used in the wild, primarily in targeted attacks. It involves setting the `cbSymbolZone` field to an invalid offset, triggering an out-of-bound write that corrupts a pointer to the CClfsContainer object. Once the vulnerability is exploited, attackers can manipulate memory to perform arbitrary actions with SYSTEM-level privileges. This allows them to achieve their objectives, such as disabling security applications and gaining full control over the compromised system.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary who has already gained local access to the victim system. To exploit this vulnerability, the adversary needs to already have access to the system and must also "win a race condition". If successfully exploited, the adversary would gain elevated privileges on the victim system. This vulnerability has been identified as exploited in the wild; however, technical exploitation details have not been publicly shared.

This vulnerability is exploited by an attacker who has already obtained access to a target system to execute code. The vulnerability lies in the Common Log File System (CLFS) driver, specifically in the `CClfsBaseFilePersisted::LoadContainerQ()` function, due to a logic bug in handling container context objects. This vulnerability has been exploited by threat actors to gain elevated privileges on Windows systems. Attackers leveraged this flaw to execute arbitrary code with system-level privileges, allowing them to manipulate system processes and deploy additional malware to perform further malicious activities. The exploit in question is actively being used in the wild, primarily in ransomware campaigns. It involves corrupting the `pContainer` field of a container context object with a user-mode address by using malformed BLF files. Once the vulnerability is exploited, attackers can manipulate memory to execute code with elevated privileges. This allows them to achieve their objectives, such as stealing the System token and gaining full control over the compromised system.

This vulnerability is leveraged by an adversary who has already gained local access to the victim system. The adversary exploits this vulnerability to elevate their privileges on the system via the Print Spooler, which could give the adversary the ability to distribute and install malicious programs on victims’ computers that can steal stored data This vulnerability has been actively exploited by cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to corporate networks and resources. Details about who is exploiting this vulnerability and their exact movements have not been publicly shared.

This vulnerability is exploited by an attacker who has obtained local access tothe target system. The vulnerability lies in the Client Server Run-Time Subsystem (CSRSS) on Windows, specifically in the activation context caching mechanism, due to improper handling of crafted assembly manifests. This vulnerability has been exploited by threat actors to gain elevated privileges on Windows systems. Attackers leveraged this flaw to execute arbitrary system-level commands, allowing them to manipulate system processes and deploy additional malware to perform further malicious activities. The exploit in question is actively being used in the wild, primarily in targeted attacks. It involves creating a malicious activation context by providing a crafted assembly manifest, which is cached and used the next time the process spawns. Once the vulnerability is exploited, attackers can load a malicious DLL to achieve system-level code execution. This allows them to achieve their objectives, such as executing arbitrary code with elevated privileges, with the same permissions as the compromised system's user.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary who already has access to the victim system. This vulnerability, also known as SpoolFool, is a local privilege escalation vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, which manages print operations on Windows systems. This vulnerability allows attackers to execute code with SYSTEM-level privileges by exploiting the `SpoolDirectory` configuration setting. The `SpoolDirectory` is writable by all users and can be manipulated using the `SetPrinterDataEx()` function, provided the attacker has `PRINTER_ACCESS_ADMINISTER` permissions. The exploit involves creating a directory junction and using a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to write a malicious DLL to a privileged directory, such as `C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\4`. This DLL is then loaded and executed by the Print Spooler service, granting the attacker elevated privileges. This method circumvents previous security checks designed to prevent privilege escalation through the Print Spooler. The vulnerability has been exploited in the wild, with attackers using tools like the SpoolFool proof of concept (PoC) published on GitHub. One observed attack involved creating a local administrator account with a default password, indicating the potential for significant system compromise. The Gelsemium APT group has been linked to activity exploiting this vulnerability, highlighting its use in advanced persistent threat campaigns.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary who has already gained local access to the victim system. The adversary gains access to the vulnerability either by social engineering, a separate exploit, or malware. Exploiting this vulnerability grants the adversary elevated privileges on the victim system. This vulnerability has been identified as being exploited in the wild; however, technical details of how the vulnerability has been leveraged by a hacker or APT have not been publicly released.

The vulnerability in Microsoft Windows allows local attackers to escalate privileges by exploiting a flaw in the Windows Installer service. By creating a junction, attackers can delete targeted files or directories, potentially executing arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. However, attackers must already have access and the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system to exploit this vulnerability. This vulnerability has been identified as exploited in the wild; however, specific details on how the vulnerability was exploited have not been publicly released.

This vulnerability is exploited by a local or remote adversary who already has access to the system. The vulnerability enables the attacker to elevate their privileges due to over permissive ACLs on system file and elevate their privileges to SYSTEM level. By exploiting this vulnerability an attacker could gain the ability to run arbitrary code, install programs, view/modify/delete data, or create new user accounts with full rights.

This vulnerability is exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker by specifying a default connection profile/tunnel group, enabling a brute-force attack to identify valid credentials and establish a clienteles SSL VPN session using those valid credentials.

This vulnerability is exploited by an attacker who has access to administrator credentials. The adversary leverages these credentials to execute arbitrary commands using root privileges.

This vulnerability is exploited through improper privilege escalation in the Web User Interface feature of Cisco IOS XE software. Attackers first used this vulnerability to elevate privileges from a normal user to root by leveraging a newly created local user account. This allowed them to write an implant to the file system, further compromising the device. This CVE was exploited after the adversary exploited CVE-2023-20198.

This vulnerability is exploited through a command injection weakness. Remote authenticated attackers leverage this vulnerability to perform arbitrary code execution on the target system via the Windows Resource Profiles Feature.

Attackers have gained access to affected ASUS routers by using brute-force login attempts and authentication bypasses, allowing them to inject and execute commands to enable SSH. Additionally, they can place a backdoor in the NVRAM.

While this vulnerability was originally considered a denial-of-service issue in 2021, this improper neutralization issue has been exploited in 2025 as a remote code execution vulnerability. After authenticating (either with default credentials or via brute force, password stuffing, or dictionary attacks), an attacker can execute arbitrary commands as a "nobody" user.

This insufficient authorization vulnerability is exploited by a local attacker who has access to low-privileged code where they then execute commands within confd_cli at a higher privilege levels. Performing these commands could grant the local attacker root privileges.

This vulnerability is exploited through a buffer overflow weakness. Remote authenticated attackers leverage this vulnerability to perform arbitrary code execution with root privileges on the Pulse Connect Secure gateway by manipulating input buffers.

This vulnerability is exploited by a remote attacker who has obtained administrative console access on the target system. Successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to manipulate the component to execute arbitrary commands on an affected installation. This vulnerability has been exploited in the wild.

This Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability is exploited by an unauthenticated attacker via a crafted request can inject custom PHP code through the EmailTemplates because of missing input validation. This vulnerability has been exploited by threat actors to gain initial access to AWS accounts by injecting custom PHP code through the SugarCRM email templates module. Attackers leveraged misconfigurations to expand their access, obtaining long-term AWS access keys from compromised EC2 instances. They used tools like Pacu and Scout Suite to explore AWS services such as EC2, IAM, RDS, and S3, and gathered account information via AWS Organizations and Cost and Usage services. The attackers moved laterally by creating RDS snapshots and new EC2 instances, modifying security groups, and attempting to escalate privileges by logging in as the Root user. They also employed defense evasion techniques, including deploying resources in non-standard regions and intermittently stopping EC2 instances to avoid detection and minimize costs. The exploit in question is actively being used to compromise hosts by installing a PHP-based web shell. It involves an authentication bypass against the "/index.php" endpoint of the targeted service. Once bypassed, the attacker obtains a cookie and sends a secondary POST request to "/cache/images/sweet.phar" to upload a small PNG-encoded file containing PHP code. This file acts as a web shell, allowing the execution of commands specified in the base64-encoded query argument "c". For example, a request like 'POST /cache/images/sweet.phar?c="L2Jpbi9pZA=="' would execute the command "/bin/id" with the same permissions as the web service's user.

This vulnerability is exploited by a remote adversary who has either authenticated to a Microsoft Exchange Server or has gained access to PowerShell prior to leveraging this vulnerability. The adversary then performs remote code execution via PowerShell to install a Chopper web shell to perform Active Directory reconnaissance and data exfiltration.

This vulnerability is exploited by a remote, authenticated users access to internal API functions that allows attackers to upload and execute arbitrary code. This vulnerability has been exploited by threat actors associated with AvosLocker ransomware, as identified by Kroll analysts. These actors have developed new tactics targeting backup systems, specifically leveraging vulnerabilities in Veeam Backup and Replication software (CVE-2022-26500 and CVE-2022-26501) to potentially exfiltrate data while evading detection.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary who has gained authentication to the Exchange Server and exploited validation issues in command-let arguments. This gives the adversary access to perform remote code execution on the server.

CVE-2019-11634 is a remote code execution vulnerability for Citrix Workspace Application and Receiver for Windows

Cisco Small Business Router models RV016, RV042, RV042G, RV082, RV320, and RV325 perform improper validation of HTTP packet user input. An authenticated attacker can craft these requests and send them, leading to arbitrary command execution.

This vulnerability is exploited by an authenticated, remote attacker who has administrative control of either a group member or a key server to execute arbitrary code on an affected device or cause the device to crash. This vulnerability has been identified as being exploited in the wild by Chinese adversary groups.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary who has already exploited an ESXi system and gained access to a valid account. Using this account, the adversary creates a new AD group named "ESXi Admins" that the ESXi Hypervisor grants full admin privileges. Adversary groups such as Storm-0506, Storm-1175, Octo Tempest, and Manatee Tempest have leveraged this vulnerability to deploy ransomware known as Akira and Black Basta onto compromised environments.

This vulnerability is exploited through an authentication bypass weakness in the web component of Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure. Remote attackers leverage this vulnerability to gain unauthorized access by bypassing control checks.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary who has fully compromised ESXi host. The adversary can exploit the authentication bypass flaw, leading to a failure in authenticating host-to-guest operations. The threat group UNC3886 has exploited this vulnerability to deploy VirtualPita and VirtualPie backdoors on guest VMs by escalating privileges to root on compromised ESXi hosts. This allows for unauthenticated command execution and file transfer.

This vulnerability is exploited by a malicious actor via improper validation via SAML to modify session data and escalate privileges to gain admin access to the Zabbix Frontend. This allows attackers to control the saml_data[username_attribute] value. This flaw enables unauthenticated users to bypass authentication and access the Zabbix dashboard as a highly-privileged user, such as the default "Admin" user. Additionally, incorrect handling of Zabbix installer files permits unauthenticated users to access and reconfigure servers.

This authentication bypass vulnerability is exploited by remote attackers via the User Portal and Webadmin components. This vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the victim machine. It was actively exploited by Chinese state-sponsored APT groups, including "Drifting Cloud," to target organizations and governments across South Asia, particularly in Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The attackers leveraged this vulnerability to deploy webshells, conduct man-in-the-middle attacks by modifying DNS responses, and intercept user credentials and session cookies from content management systems. This vulnerability was exploited by Chinese state-sponsored threat actors as part of a broader campaign named "Pacific Rim." This campaign involved multiple Chinese APT groups, including APT31, APT41, and Volt Typhoon, targeting Sophos firewalls. The backdoor PygmyGoat, a novel rootkit that takes the form of a shared object ("libsophos.so"), has been found to be delivered following the exploitation of this vulnerability. The use of the rootkit was observed between March and April 2022 on a government device and a technology partner, and again in May 2022 on a machine in a military hospital based in Asia. This vulnerability was also exploited by at least two advanced persistent threat (APT) groups in a highly targeted attack campaign. The attackers used the vulnerability to place malicious files into a fixed filesystem location on affected devices, leveraging a combination of authentication bypass and command injection to execute arbitrary commands as root. The attack involved deploying various malware families, including GoMet and Gh0st RAT, to maintain persistent access and exfiltrate sensitive data. The attackers demonstrated significant knowledge of the device firmware, using custom ELF binaries and runtime packers like VMProtect to complicate analysis. They manipulated internal commands to move and manipulate files, execute processes, and exfiltrate data. The campaign targeted network security devices, employing a two-stage attack to drop remote access tools and execute commands remotely.

An attacker can add a local_access_token parameter to a request targeting a specific endpoint on vulnerable Fortinet devices, leading to an authentication bypass. From there, they can obtain super_admin privileges.

This vulnerability in CrushFTP has been exploited to give attackers control how the software handles authentication, allowing access to the administrative account. From there, attackers have the ability to read and upload files, execute arbitrary code, create backdoors in the form of new administrative accounts, and conduct a full system takeover.

This vulnerability is exploited through improper input validation in Atlassian Confluence, allowing remote attackers to translate arbitrary HTTP parameters into getter/setter sequences via the XWorks2 middleware. This vulnerability enables the creation of unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and the upload of malicious plugins, granting attackers the ability to modify Java objects at runtime and execute arbitrary code. A nation-state actor known as Storm-0062 has been attributed to exploiting this vulnerability in the wild.

Attackers with API access have been reported as exploiting this vulnerability through a JSON payload sent to a Wazuh worker server. Requests relayed to the master server can result in arbitrary code execution.

This vulnerability is exploited by an adversary who has gained access to a valid account on the vCenter Server. The adversary can gain access to unencrypted Postgres credentials on the server, which grants the adversary access to the vCenter's internal database where the vpxuser account passphrase is stored. Adversaries can leverage this information to decrypt the vpxuser password, which will grant them root privileges.

This control provides partial coverage for all of this technique's sub-techniques and a number of its procedures, resulting in an overall score of Partial.

This control provides minimal detection for its procedure examples. Additionally, it is able to detect only one of its sub-techniques (Cloud Accounts) resulting in a Minimal Coverage score and consequently an overall score of Minimal.

This control only provides alerts for a set of Azure database offerings. Databases that have been deployed to endpoints within Azure or third-party databases deployed to Azure do not generate alerts for this control.

This control's recommendations about removing deprecated and external accounts with sensitive permissions from your subscription can lead to mitigating the Cloud Accounts sub-technique of this technique. Because this is a recommendation and has low coverage, it is assessed as Minimal.

This control's detection is specific to the Cosmos DB and therefore provides minimal overall detection coverage for Valid Accounts resulting in a Minimal score. A relevant alert is "Access from an unusual location to a Cosmos DB account".

This control is able to detect some of this technique's sub-techniques resulting in a Partial Coverage score and consequently an overall score of Partial.

This control can protect against abuse of valid accounts.

This control only provides protection for one of this technique's sub-techniques while not providing any protection for its procedure examples (due to being specific to Azure AD) nor its remaining sub-technqiues. Consequently its coverage score factor is Minimal, resulting in a Minimal score.

This control can protect against abuse of valid accounts.

Artifact Analysis scans container images uploaded to Artifact Registry or Container Registry (deprecated) for vulnerabilities that could potentially be used to escalate privileges, such as default accounts with root permissions in Docker containers. Due to the medium threat protection coverage and scan results being available 48 hours after completion, this control was scored as partial.

Mandiant Digital Threat Monitoring continually monitors for compromised credentials and data leaks on both the open and dark web. This control may protect against credential abuse by alerting on leaked credentials. Since this control must depend on accessible sources for dumps, it does not protect against credentials that have been collected for a campaign but never posted, so the score is partial.

This control may be able to detect when adversaries use valid cloud accounts to elevate privileges through manipulation of IAM or access policies. This monitoring can be fine tuned to specific assets, policies, and organizations.

The Cloud Endpoints capability provides support for multiple authentication methods, including API keys and Google ID tokens. Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) across account types, including local, domain, and cloud accounts, can prevent unauthorized access even if credentials are compromised.

This control can be used to mitigate malicious attacks of cloud accounts by implementing multi-factor authentication techniques or password policies.

GKE Enterprise incorporates the Anthos Config Management feature to create and manage Kubernetes objects across multiple clusters at once. PodSecurityPolicies can be enforced to prevent Pods from using the root Linux user. Based on the medium detection coverage, this was scored as partial.

Google Security Ops is able to trigger an alert based on RDP logons from non-private IP ranges. This technique was scored as minimal based on low or uncertain detection coverage factor. https://github.com/chronicle/detection-rules/blob/783e0e5947774785db1c55041b70176deeca6f46/soc_prime_rules/active_directory_security/security/remote_desktop_from_internet__via_audit.yaral

This control may mitigate the impact of compromised valid accounts by enabling fine-grained access policies and implementing least-privilege policies. MFA can provide protection against an adversary that obtains valid credentials by requiring the adversary to complete an additional authentication process before access is permitted.

IAP applies the relevant IAM policy to check if the user is authorized to access the requested resource. If the user has the IAP-secured Web App User role on the Cloud console project where the resource exists, they're authorized to access the application. This control can mitigate against adversaries that try to obtain credentials of accounts, including cloud accounts.

Identity Platform lets you add Google-grade authentication to your apps and services, making it easier to secure user accounts and securely managing credentials. MFA can provide protection against an adversary that obtains valid credentials by requiring the adversary to complete an additional authentication process before access is permitted.

Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of a cloud account by gaining access through means of Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Policy Intelligence role recommendations generated by IAM Recommender help enforce least privilege principals to ensure that permission levels are properly managed.

Adversaries may attempt to obtain credentials of existing account through privilege escalation or defense evasion. IAM audit logging in GCP can be used to determine roles and permissions, along with routinely checking user permissions to ensure only the expected users have the ability to list IAM identities or otherwise discover cloud accounts.

This control is able to mitigate against abuse of compromised valid accounts by restricting access from those accounts to resources contained within the VPC perimeter the account belongs to. Resources and services contained in other VPC networks also cannot be accessed by user accounts that are not within the VPC network perimeter.

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.

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

This control provides significant coverage for one of this technique's sub-techniques, resulting in an overall score of Minimal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Multiple conditions along can be combined to create fine-grained and specific policies that partially enforce access controls to account resources that adversaries may attempt to abuse: conditional access to Cloud APIs, blocking legacy authentication, requiring multi-factor authentication for users, block access by location, block access to unsupported devices, failed login attempts, account lockout policies, etc.. These features may require Microsoft Entra ID P2.

This control only provides minimal protection for this technique's procedure examples along and also only protects one of its sub-techniques resulting in an overall Minimal score.

This control only provides minimal protection for this technique's procedure examples along and also only protects one of its sub-techniques resulting in an overall Minimal score.

This control only protects cloud accounts and therefore its overall coverage is minimal resulting in a Minimal respond score for this technique.

This control only protects cloud accounts and therefore its overall coverage is minimal resulting in a Minimal respond score for this technique.

Entra ID's continuous access evaluation is a security control implemented by enabling services to subscribe to critical Microsoft Entra events. Those events can then be evaluated and enforced near real time. This process enables tenant users lose access to organizational SharePoint Online files, email, calendar, or tasks, and Teams from Microsoft 365 client apps within minutes after a critical event is detected. The following events are currently evaluated: User Account is deleted or disabled Password for a user is changed or reset Multifactor authentication is enabled for the user Administrator explicitly revokes all refresh tokens for a user High user risk detected by Microsoft Entra ID Protection License Requirements: Continuous access evaluation will be included in all versions of Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Purview auditing solutions provide an integrated solution to help organizations effectively respond to security events, forensic investigations, internal investigations, and compliance obligations. Thousands of user and admin operations performed in dozens of Microsoft 365 services and solutions are captured, recorded, and retained in your organization's unified audit log. Audit records for these events are searchable by security ops, IT admins, insider risk teams, and compliance and legal investigators in your organization. This capability provides visibility into the activities performed across your Microsoft 365 organization. Microsoft's Audit Solutions protects from Valid Account attacks due to Audit Solutions providing the visibility to allow admins to regularly audit user accounts for activity and deactivate or remove any that are no longer needed. License Requirements: Microsoft 365 E3 and E5

Microsoft Defender security alerts explain the suspicious activities detected by Defender for Identity sensors on your network, and the actors and computers involved in each threat. Alert evidence lists contain direct links to the involved users and computers, to help make your investigations easy and direct. Defender security alerts are divided into the following categories or phases, like the phases seen in a typical cyber-attack kill chain. Learn more about each phase, the alerts designed to detect each attack, and how to use the alerts to help protect your network using the following links: Reconnaissance and discovery alerts Persistence and privilege escalation alerts Credential access alerts Lateral movement alerts Other alerts License: A Microsoft 365 security product license entitles customer use of Microsoft Defender XDR.

This control can identify anomalous behavior such as geographically impossible logins and out-of-character activity. Relevant alerts include "Activity from anonymous IP address" , "Activity from infrequent country", "Activity from suspicious IP address", "Impossible Travel", and "Activity performed by terminated user".

Microsoft Secure Score is a measurement of an organization's security posture, with a higher number indicating more recommended actions taken. It can be found at Microsoft Secure Score in the Microsoft Defender portal. Following the Secure Score recommendations can protect your organization from threats. From a centralized dashboard in the Microsoft Defender portal, organizations can monitor and work on the security of their Microsoft 365 identities, apps, and devices. Your score is updated in real time to reflect the information presented in the visualizations and recommended action pages. Secure Score also syncs daily to receive system data about your achieved points for each action. To help you find the information you need more quickly, Microsoft recommended actions are organized into groups: Identity (Microsoft Entra accounts & roles) Device (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, known as Microsoft Secure Score for Devices) Apps (email and cloud apps, including Office 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps) Data (through Microsoft Information Protection)

This control provides partial detection for some of this technique's sub-techniques and procedure examples resulting in an overall Partial detection score.

This control provides recommendations that can lead to protecting against the malicious usage of valid cloud accounts but does not provide recommendations for the remaining sub-techniques Additionally, it provides limited protection for this technique's procedure examples. Consequently, its overall protection coverage score is minimal.

This control provides recommendations that can lead to the detection of the malicious usage of valid cloud accounts but does not provide recommendations for the remaining sub-techniques Additionally, it provides limited detection for this technique's procedure examples. Consequently, its overall detection coverage score is minimal.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 includes powerful automated investigation and response (AIR) capabilities that can save your security operations team time and effort. As alerts are triggered, it's up to your security operations team to review, prioritize, and respond to those alerts. Keeping up with the volume of incoming alerts can be overwhelming. Automating some of those tasks can help. AIR enables your security operations team to operate more efficiently and effectively. AIR capabilities include automated investigation processes in response to well-known threats that exist today. Appropriate remediation actions await approval, enabling your security operations team to respond effectively to detected threats. With AIR, your security operations team can focus on higher-priority tasks without losing sight of important alerts that are triggered. Examples include: Soft delete email messages or clusters, Block URL (time-of-click), Turn off external mail forwarding, Turn off delegation, etc. Required licenses E5 or Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 licenses.

An incident in Microsoft Defender XDR is a collection of correlated alerts and associated data that make up the story of an attack. Microsoft 365 services and apps create alerts when they detect a suspicious or malicious event or activity. Individual alerts provide valuable clues about a completed or ongoing attack. Attacks typically employ various techniques against different types of entities, such as devices, users, and mailboxes. The result of this is multiple alerts for multiple entities in your tenant. Piecing the individual alerts together to gain insight into an attack can be challenging and time-consuming, Microsoft Defender XDR automatically aggregates the alerts and their associated information into an incident. A typical Incident Response workflow in Microsoft Defender XDR begins with a triage action, next is the investigate action, and finally is the response action. Microsoft 365 Defender Incident Response responds to valid account attacks due to Incident Response monitoring for newly constructed logon behavior that may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts. License Requirements: Microsoft Defender XDR

Microsoft Purview Privileged Access Management allows granular access control over privileged admin tasks in Office 365. It can help protect your organization from breaches that use existing privileged admin accounts with standing access to sensitive data or access to critical configuration settings. Privileged access management requires users to request just-in-time access to complete elevated and privileged tasks through a highly scoped and time-bounded approval workflow. This configuration gives users just-enough-access to perform the task at hand, without risking exposure of sensitive data or critical configuration settings. Microsoft 365 configuration settings. When used with Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management, these two features provide access control with just-in-time access at different scopes. (e.g., Encryption, RBAC, Conditional Access, JIT, Just Enough Access (with Approval). License requirements: M365 E5 customers.

The RBAC control can be used to implement the principle of least privilege for account management, reducing the potential actions that can be taken with Valid Default and Cloud Accounts. Although RBAC can limit the actions the adversary can take if a Valid Account has been compromised, it does not protect against different variations of the technique's procedure. Due to overall Minimal coverage, it receives an overall score of Minimal. License Requirements: ME-ID Built-in Roles (Free) License Requirements: ME-ID Built-in Roles (Free)

Advanced hunting is a query-based threat hunting tool that lets you explore up to 30 days of raw data. Advanced hunting in Microsoft Defender XDR allows you to proactively hunt for threats across: Devices managed by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Emails processed by Microsoft 365, Cloud app activities, authentication events, and domain controller activities. With this level of visibility, you can quickly hunt for threats that traverse sections of your network, including sophisticated intrusions that arrive on email or the web, elevate local privileges, acquire privileged domain credentials, and move laterally to across your devices. Advanced hunting supports two modes, guided and advanced. Users use advanced mode if they are comfortable using Kusto Query Language (KQL) to create queries from scratch. Advanced Threat Hunting Detects Valid Account attacks due to the IdentityLogonEvents table in the advanced hunting schema which contains information about all authentication activities related to Microsoft online services captured by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps which monitors for newly constructed logon behavior. License Requirements: Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 2

Defender for Identity LMPs are visual guides that help you quickly understand and identify exactly how attackers can move laterally inside your network. The purpose of lateral movements within the cyber-attack kill chain are for attackers to gain and compromise your sensitive accounts using non-sensitive accounts. Compromising your sensitive accounts gets them another step closer to their ultimate goal, domain dominance. To stop these attacks from being successful, Defender for Identity LMPs give you easy to interpret, direct visual guidance on your most vulnerable, sensitive accounts.

App governance in Defender for Cloud Apps is a set of security and policy management capabilities designed for OAuth-enabled apps registered on Microsoft Entra ID, Google, and Salesforce. App governance delivers visibility, remediation, and governance into how these apps and their users access, use, and share sensitive data in Microsoft 365 and other cloud platforms through actionable insights and automated policy alerts and actions. App governance also enables you to see which user-installed OAuth applications have access to data on Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce. It tells you what permissions the apps have and which users have granted access to their accounts. App governance insights enable you to make informed decisions around blocking or restricting apps that present significant risk to your organization App Governance Detects Valid Account attacks due to App Governance monitoring aggregated sign-in activity for each app and tracking all risky sign-in's. License Requirements: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

This control only protects cloud accounts and therefore its overall protection coverage is Minimal.

Accounts should have complex and unique passwords across all systems on the network. Passwords and access keys should be rotated regularly. License Requirements: Microsoft Entra ID Free, Microsoft Entra ID P1, or Microsoft Entra ID P2

Accounts should have complex and unique passwords across all systems on the network. When a password is changed or reset for any user in a Microsoft Entra tenant, the current version of the global banned password list is used to validate the strength of the password. This validation check results in stronger passwords for all Microsoft Entra customers. License Requirements: Microsoft Entra ID Free, Microsoft Entra ID P1, or Microsoft Entra ID P2

This control only provides protection for one of this technique's sub-techniques while not providing any protection for the remaining and therefore its coverage score is Minimal, resulting in a Minimal score.

The PIM control supports an Access Review feature, which can partially be used to avoid stale role assignment for Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts. The control does not protect against this technique's other sub-techniques, resulting in a Minimal coverage score, for an overall score of Minimal. License Requirements: Microsoft Entra ID P2 or Microsoft Entra ID Governance