Adversaries may leverage external-facing remote services to initially access and/or persist within a network. Remote services such as VPNs, Citrix, and other access mechanisms allow users to connect to internal enterprise network resources from external locations. There are often remote service gateways that manage connections and credential authentication for these services. Services such as Windows Remote Management and VNC can also be used externally.(Citation: MacOS VNC software for Remote Desktop)
Access to Valid Accounts to use the service is often a requirement, which could be obtained through credential pharming or by obtaining the credentials from users after compromising the enterprise network.(Citation: Volexity Virtual Private Keylogging) Access to remote services may be used as a redundant or persistent access mechanism during an operation.
Access may also be gained through an exposed service that doesn’t require authentication. In containerized environments, this may include an exposed Docker API, Kubernetes API server, kubelet, or web application such as the Kubernetes dashboard.(Citation: Trend Micro Exposed Docker Server)(Citation: Unit 42 Hildegard Malware)
View in MITRE ATT&CK®| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mandiant_asm | Mandiant Attack Surface Management (ASM) | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
Mandiant Attack Surface Management continuously discovers and assesses an organization's assets for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposures. This control can discover vulnerable Remote Services offered on the cloud or on hosted servers. Since this monitoring is continual and is derived from Mandiant cyber threat intelligence, this control is scored as significant.
References
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| advanced_protection_program | Advanced Protection Program | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
Advanced Protection Program enables the use of a security key for multi-factor authentication. Enabling MFA for remote service accounts can mitigate an adversary's ability to leverage stolen credentials since they won't have the respective security key to gain access.
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| chrome_enterprise_premium | Chrome Enterprise Premium | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
Chrome Enterprise Premium implements a zero trust model which restricts access to resources unless all rules and conditions are met. Instead of securing resources at the network-level, access controls are instead applied to individual devices and users.
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| cloud_identity | Cloud Identity | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
This control may mitigate an adversary's ability to leverage external-facing remote services through multi-factor authentication of service account credentials.
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| cloud_ngfw | Cloud Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)_ | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
Cloud NGFW can allow or deny traffic based on the traffic's protocol, destination ports, sources, and destinations. This functionality can be used to only allow certain remote services to be available. Furthermore, it can enforce restrictions such that remote services are only from trusted hosts (i.e., only allow remote access traffic from certain hosts). This mapping is given a score of Partial because while it can limit which external remote services and hosts can be used to access the network, it cannot protect against the misuse of legitimate external remote services (e.g., it cannot protect against an adversary using a trusted host that is permitted to use remote services as part of an attack).
References
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| cloud_vpn | Cloud VPN | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
This control provides protections against adversaries who try to access and/or persist within a network. Remote services such as VPNs, Citrix, and other access mechanisms allow users to connect to internal enterprise network resources from external locations.
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| security_command_center | Security Command Center | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
SCC is able to detect attackers communicating with a compromised workload from a remote system (e.g., "reverse shell"). SCC specifically detects for stdin bound to a remote socket. Because of the high threat detection coverage and near-real time temporal factor this control was graded as significant.
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| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| amazon_inspector | Amazon Inspector | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
The Amazon Inspector Best Practices assessment package can detect a security control setting related to remote service access on Linux endpoints. Specifically, "Disable root login over SSH". This information can be used identify insecure configurations and harden the endpoints. Amazon Inspector does not directly protect against adversaries accessing remote services. Given Amazon Inspector can only assess this security control on Linux platforms (although it also supports Windows) and it only restricts access to remote services for one user account, the coverage score is Minimal leading to an overall Minimal score.
References
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| amazon_virtual_private_cloud | Amazon Virtual Private Cloud | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
VPC security groups and network access control lists (NACLs) can limit access to external remote services to the minimum necessary.
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| aws_network_firewall | AWS Network Firewall | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
AWS Network Firewall has the ability to pass, drop, or alert on traffic based on the network protocol as well as perform deep packet inspection on the payload. This functionality can be used to only allow certain remote services to be available. Futhermore, it can enforce restrictions such that remote services are only from trusted hosts (i.e., only allow remote access traffic from certain hosts). This mapping is given a score of Partial because while it can limit which external remote services and hosts can be used to access the network, it cannot protect against the misuse of legitimate external remote services (e.g., it cannot protect against an adversary using a trusted host that is permitted to use remote services as part of an attack).
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| aws_single_sign-on | AWS Single Sign-On | technique_scores | T1133 | External Remote Services |
Comments
This control may protect against abuse of external remote services by requiring multi-factor authentication for single sign-on accounts.
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