An adversary may add additional roles or permissions to an adversary-controlled user or service account to maintain persistent access to a container orchestration system. For example, an adversary with sufficient permissions may create a RoleBinding or a ClusterRoleBinding to bind a Role or ClusterRole to a Kubernetes account.(Citation: Kubernetes RBAC)(Citation: Aquasec Kubernetes Attack 2023) Where attribute-based access control (ABAC) is in use, an adversary with sufficient permissions may modify a Kubernetes ABAC policy to give the target account additional permissions.(Citation: Kuberentes ABAC)
This account modification may immediately follow Create Account or other malicious account activity. Adversaries may also modify existing Valid Accounts that they have compromised.
Note that where container orchestration systems are deployed in cloud environments, as with Google Kubernetes Engine, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, and Azure Kubernetes Service, cloud-based role-based access control (RBAC) assignments or ABAC policies can often be used in place of or in addition to local permission assignments.(Citation: Google Cloud Kubernetes IAM)(Citation: AWS EKS IAM Roles for Service Accounts)(Citation: Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service Service Accounts) In these cases, this technique may be used in conjunction with Additional Cloud Roles.
View in MITRE ATT&CK®| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IA-05 | Authenticator Management | mitigates | T1098.006 | Additional Container Cluster Roles | |
| AC-03 | Access Enforcement | mitigates | T1098.006 | Additional Container Cluster Roles | |
| AC-02 | Account Management | mitigates | T1098.006 | Additional Container Cluster Roles | |
| AC-06 | Least Privilege | mitigates | T1098.006 | Additional Container Cluster Roles |
| 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 | T1098.006 | Additional Container Cluster Roles | |
| attribute.integrity.variety.Modify privileges | Modified privileges or permissions | related-to | T1098.006 | Additional Container Cluster Roles |
| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| security_command_center | Security Command Center | technique_scores | T1098.006 | Additional Container Cluster Roles |
Comments
SCC ingests Cloud Audit logs to detect when permissions are changed in a privileged group (i.e., modify group to public) with sensitive permissions or roles. This security solution protects against compromised cloud accounts used to maintain persistence. Because of the near-real time temporal factor to detect against this cyber-attack the control was graded as significant.
References
|