Temporary Elevated Cloud Access
Temporary Elevated Cloud Access [T1548.005]
Last updated
Temporary Elevated Cloud Access [T1548.005]
Last updated
Name: Temporary Elevated Cloud Access
ID: T1548.005
Tactics: ,
Technique:
Temporary Elevated Cloud Access () is a sub-technique within the MITRE ATT&CK framework under Privilege Escalation (T1548). This technique involves adversaries temporarily elevating privileges within cloud environments, often through manipulation of roles, permissions, or access policies. Attackers may leverage temporary credentials or short-lived access tokens to escalate privileges, enabling unauthorized access to sensitive resources and operations within cloud services. Understanding and detecting this sub-technique is critical to protecting cloud infrastructure from unauthorized manipulation and data compromise.
Adversaries using Temporary Elevated Cloud Access typically exploit cloud service functionalities designed for legitimate administrative operations. This sub-technique often leverages the following mechanisms and execution methods:
Temporary Credentials and Tokens: Attackers may generate or obtain short-lived tokens or credentials with elevated permissions, enabling temporary privilege escalation without permanent changes to user accounts or roles.
Cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management) Manipulation: Attackers may temporarily modify IAM policies, roles, or permissions to escalate privileges. After achieving objectives, adversaries typically revert changes to avoid detection.
Role Assumption and Cross-Account Access: Attackers may assume roles with elevated privileges, either within the same account or across multiple cloud accounts, exploiting trust relationships or misconfigured access policies.
Exploitation of Misconfigured Temporary Access Policies: Attackers exploit overly permissive or incorrectly configured temporary access policies, such as AWS Security Token Service (STS), Azure Active Directory temporary roles, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) IAM temporary credentials.
Real-world procedures often involve:
Using stolen or compromised credentials to request temporary elevated access tokens.
Exploiting misconfigured IAM roles or policies to temporarily escalate privileges.
Leveraging legitimate cloud APIs or CLI tools to request and use temporary security credentials.
Using temporary privilege escalation to perform reconnaissance, lateral movement, data exfiltration, or persistence activities.
Temporary Elevated Cloud Access is commonly observed in various attack scenarios, including:
Initial Access and Reconnaissance:
Attackers may temporarily escalate privileges immediately after initial access to cloud environments to perform reconnaissance and identify valuable resources.
Lateral Movement:
Adversaries escalate privileges temporarily to move laterally across cloud resources or between cloud accounts, exploiting trust relationships or IAM policies.
Privilege Escalation and Persistence:
Attackers may repeatedly request temporary elevated access to maintain persistence without permanent changes, making detection more difficult.
Data Exfiltration and Resource Manipulation:
Adversaries temporarily escalate privileges to access sensitive data or manipulate cloud resources, such as modifying configurations, creating unauthorized resources, or exfiltrating sensitive information.
Defense Evasion:
Attackers leveraging temporary credentials or tokens often avoid detection by minimizing the time window of elevated privileges and reverting changes after achieving their objectives.
Detection of Temporary Elevated Cloud Access requires continuous monitoring, logging, and analysis of cloud environments. Common detection methods and indicators include:
Cloud Audit Logs Analysis:
Regular analysis of cloud audit logs (e.g., AWS CloudTrail, Azure Activity Logs, GCP Cloud Audit Logs) for unexpected or unauthorized requests for temporary elevated privileges or tokens.
Monitoring IAM Policy Changes:
Detecting unusual or unauthorized changes to IAM roles, policies, or permissions, especially temporary or short-lived modifications.
Anomaly Detection Tools:
Employing cloud security monitoring tools and anomaly detection solutions that identify abnormal IAM activity, role assumptions, or token usage patterns.
Behavioral Analytics:
Using behavioral analytics solutions to baseline normal IAM usage and detect deviations indicative of temporary privilege escalations.
Indicators of Compromise (IoCs):
Sudden or unusual increases in temporary token generation or role assumption events.
Temporary IAM policy changes reverting shortly after privilege escalation.
Unusual cross-account role assumptions or access attempts.
Requests for temporary credentials from unfamiliar or unauthorized IP addresses or geographic locations.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM):
CSPM solutions identify misconfigured IAM policies or overly permissive temporary access policies that attackers could exploit.
Early detection of Temporary Elevated Cloud Access is critical due to the significant impacts it can have on cloud environments, including:
Unauthorized Access to Sensitive Data:
Attackers with temporary elevated privileges can access confidential information, intellectual property, customer data, or financial records, potentially leading to severe data breaches.
Resource Manipulation and Damage:
Attackers can create, modify, or delete cloud resources, causing disruptions, data loss, or financial damage.
Lateral Movement and Persistence:
Temporary privilege escalation facilitates lateral movement within cloud environments, allowing attackers to expand their foothold and maintain persistence without detection.
Compliance and Regulatory Violations:
Unauthorized access and manipulation of cloud resources can lead to compliance violations, regulatory fines, and reputational damage.
Difficulty of Post-Incident Analysis:
Temporary privilege escalation often leaves minimal traces, complicating forensic investigations and incident response efforts.
Financial Impacts:
Attackers may leverage temporary elevated privileges to create unauthorized cloud resources, incurring unexpected costs for organizations.
Early detection and response minimize these impacts, enabling organizations to mitigate risks, reduce damage, and maintain compliance and security posture.
Real-world examples and scenarios involving Temporary Elevated Cloud Access include:
Capital One Data Breach (2019):
Attackers exploited misconfigured IAM roles in AWS, temporarily escalating privileges to access sensitive customer data stored in AWS S3 buckets. The breach resulted in unauthorized access to millions of customer records, highlighting the critical importance of proper IAM configuration and monitoring.
TeamTNT Attacks on Cloud Environments:
The TeamTNT threat group leveraged compromised credentials and temporary elevated privileges to deploy cryptocurrency-mining malware into cloud infrastructures. They exploited temporary IAM roles and tokens to gain access and escalate privileges, resulting in unauthorized resource usage and financial impacts.
Azure OAuth Token Abuse:
Attackers have been observed exploiting Azure OAuth tokens with temporary elevated privileges to access sensitive resources, perform reconnaissance, and exfiltrate data. Temporary tokens allowed adversaries to evade traditional detection mechanisms, highlighting the need for robust monitoring and anomaly detection.
GCP IAM Temporary Credential Exploitation:
Adversaries have exploited temporary IAM credentials in Google Cloud Platform to escalate privileges and access sensitive resources. Misconfigured temporary access policies allowed attackers to assume roles with elevated permissions, leading to unauthorized access and data breaches.
These examples illustrate the importance of proper IAM policy configuration, continuous monitoring, and anomaly detection to identify and mitigate Temporary Elevated Cloud Access attacks.