Cloud Account

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)

In addition to user accounts, cloud accounts may be associated with services. Cloud providers handle the concept of service accounts in different ways. In Azure, service accounts include service principals and managed identities, which can be linked to various resources such as OAuth applications, serverless functions, and virtual machines in order to grant those resources permissions to perform various activities in the environment.(Citation: Microsoft Entra ID Service Principals) In GCP, service accounts can also be linked to specific resources, as well as be impersonated by other accounts for [Temporary Elevated Cloud Access](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1548/005).(Citation: GCP Service Accounts) While AWS has no specific concept of service accounts, resources can be directly granted permission to assume roles.(Citation: AWS Instance Profiles)(Citation: AWS Lambda Execution Role)

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](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1098/001) or assigning [Additional Cloud Roles](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1098/003).

Platforms: Azure AD
Office 365
IaaS
Google Workspace
SaaS
Tactics:
phase_name: persistence

Detection:
Collect usage logs from cloud user and administrator accounts to identify unusual activity in the creation of new accounts and assignment of roles to those accounts. Monitor for accounts assigned to admin roles that go over a certain threshold of known admins.

References:
source_name: mitre-attack
description: Ako-Adjei, K., Dickhaus, M., Baumgartner, P., Faigel, D., et. al.. (2019, October 8). About admin roles. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
source_name: Microsoft O365 Admin Roles
description: AWS. (n.d.). Creating an IAM User in Your AWS Account. Retrieved January 29, 2020.
source_name: AWS Create IAM User
description: AWS. (n.d.). Lambda execution role. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
source_name: AWS Lambda Execution Role
description: AWS. (n.d.). Using instance profiles. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
source_name: AWS Instance Profiles
description: Google. (n.d.). Create Cloud Identity user accounts. Retrieved January 29, 2020.
source_name: GCP Create Cloud Identity Users
description: Google. (n.d.). Service Accounts Overview. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
source_name: GCP Service Accounts
description: Microsoft. (2019, November 11). Add or delete users using Azure Active Directory. Retrieved January 30, 2020.
source_name: Microsoft Azure AD Users
description: Microsoft. (2023, December 15). Application and service principal objects in Microsoft Entra ID. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
source_name: Microsoft Entra ID Service Principals
description: Microsoft. (n.d.). Add Another Admin. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
source_name: Microsoft Support O365 Add Another Admin, October 2019