Additional Cloud Roles

An adversary may add additional roles or permissions to an adversary-controlled cloud account to maintain persistent access to a tenant. For example, adversaries may update IAM policies in cloud-based environments or add a new global administrator in Office 365 environments.(Citation: AWS IAM Policies and Permissions)(Citation: Google Cloud IAM Policies)(Citation: Microsoft Support O365 Add Another Admin, October 2019)(Citation: Microsoft O365 Admin Roles) With sufficient permissions, a compromised account can gain almost unlimited access to data and settings (including the ability to reset the passwords of other admins).(Citation: Expel AWS Attacker)
(Citation: Microsoft O365 Admin Roles) 

This account modification may immediately follow [Create Account](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1136) or other malicious account activity. Adversaries may also modify existing [Valid Accounts](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1078) that they have compromised. This could lead to privilege escalation, particularly if the roles added allow for lateral movement to additional accounts.

For example, in AWS environments, an adversary with appropriate permissions may be able to use the <code>CreatePolicyVersion</code> API to define a new version of an IAM policy or the <code>AttachUserPolicy</code> API to attach an IAM policy with additional or distinct permissions to a compromised user account.(Citation: Rhino Security Labs AWS Privilege Escalation)

In some cases, adversaries may add roles to adversary-controlled accounts outside the victim cloud tenant. This allows these external accounts to perform actions inside the victim tenant without requiring the adversary to [Create Account](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1136) or modify a victim-owned account.(Citation: Invictus IR DangerDev 2024)

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

Detection:
Collect activity logs from IAM services and cloud administrator accounts to identify unusual activity in the 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:  Brian Bahtiarian, David Blanton, Britton Manahan and Kyle Pellett. (2022, April 5). Incident report: From CLI to console, chasing an attacker in AWS. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
source_name: Expel AWS Attacker
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.). Policies and permissions in IAM. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
source_name: AWS IAM Policies and Permissions
description: Google Cloud. (2022, March 31). Understanding policies. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
source_name: Google Cloud IAM Policies
description: Invictus Incident Response. (2024, January 31). The curious case of DangerDev@protonmail.me. Retrieved March 19, 2024.
source_name: Invictus IR DangerDev 2024
description: Microsoft. (n.d.). Add Another Admin. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
source_name: Microsoft Support O365 Add Another Admin, October 2019
description: Spencer Gietzen. (n.d.). AWS IAM Privilege Escalation – Methods and Mitigation. Retrieved May 27, 2022.
source_name: Rhino Security Labs AWS Privilege Escalation