Detect Additional Cloud Roles in Google Chronicle
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. 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. This account modification may immediately follow account creation or other malicious account activity. Adversaries may also modify existing valid accounts that they have compromised, potentially leading to privilege escalation and lateral movement to additional accounts. In some cases, adversaries may add roles to adversary-controlled accounts outside the victim cloud tenant, allowing external accounts to perform actions inside the victim tenant. Threat groups such as Scattered Spider, LAPSUS$, and Storm-0501 have used this technique to gain persistent administrative access to cloud environments.
MITRE ATT&CK
- Tactic
- Persistence Privilege Escalation
- Technique
- T1098 Account Manipulation
- Sub-technique
- T1098.003 Additional Cloud Roles
- Canonical reference
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1098/003/
YARA-L Detection Query
rule t1098_003_additional_cloud_roles {
meta:
author = "Argus Detection Engineering"
description = "Detects assignment of privileged cloud roles in Azure AD, Entra ID, Azure RBAC, or Office 365. Covers direct role assignments, PIM activations, and RBAC write operations consistent with T1098.003 adversary persistence via cloud role manipulation."
mitre_attack_tactic = "Persistence, Privilege Escalation"
mitre_attack_technique = "T1098.003"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1098/003/"
severity = "HIGH"
confidence = "HIGH"
version = "1.0"
events:
$e.metadata.vendor_name = "Microsoft"
$e.metadata.event_type = "USER_RESOURCE_UPDATE_PERMISSIONS"
(
re.regex($e.metadata.product_event_type,
`(?i)add member to role|add eligible member to role|assign directory role|roleAssignments/write|elevateAccess/action|roledefinitions/write`
) or
re.regex($e.target.resource.attribute.roles.name,
`(?i)global administrator|company administrator|privileged role administrator|security administrator|exchange administrator|sharepoint administrator|user access administrator|privileged authentication administrator|hybrid identity administrator|application administrator|cloud application administrator|authentication administrator`
)
)
condition:
$e
}Chronicle YARA-L 2.0 rule detecting cloud role assignment events via UDM normalized events from Microsoft log sources ingested into Google Chronicle. Matches on product_event_type for known role operation patterns and on target resource role names for high-privilege assignments. Requires Azure AD audit logs and/or O365 Management Activity to be ingested and normalized to UDM by Chronicle parsers.
Data Sources
Required Tables
False Positives & Tuning
- Authorized PIM-eligible role activations by legitimate administrators performing time-limited approved elevated tasks within a PAM workflow
- Bulk role assignments executed during Azure tenant restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, or large-scale enterprise application onboarding
- Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines assigning Contributor or Owner roles to managed identities or service principals at deploy time
- Automated identity governance platforms such as Saviynt or SailPoint re-assigning certified roles following completed access reviews
Other platforms for T1098.003
Testing Methodology
Validate this detection against 4 adversary techniques from Atomic Red Team. Each test below lists the behaviour to exercise and the telemetry you should expect to see. Executable commands and cleanup steps are available with Pro.
- Test 1Assign Global Administrator Role to User via Azure AD PowerShell
Expected signal: Azure AD AuditLogs: OperationName 'Add member to role' with TargetResources containing the target UPN and RoleName 'Global Administrator'. InitiatedBy will show the executing account's UPN and IP address. Event appears in AuditLogs within 5-15 minutes. Unified Audit Log: RecordType 8, Operation 'Add member to role.' with similar details.
- Test 2Assign Azure Subscription Owner Role via Az PowerShell (RBAC Escalation)
Expected signal: AzureActivity log: OperationNameValue 'Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write' with ActivityStatusValue 'Success', Caller set to the executing account, ResourceId containing the subscription scope and roleAssignment GUID. Event appears in AzureActivity within 2-5 minutes.
- Test 3Use elevateAccess API to Gain User Access Administrator at Root Scope
Expected signal: AzureActivity log: OperationNameValue 'Microsoft.Authorization/elevateAccess/action' with ActivityStatusValue 'Success', Caller set to the Global Admin account. A second event 'Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write' at scope '/' will also appear as the role is auto-assigned.
- Test 4Add External Guest Account to Privileged Role via Microsoft Graph API
Expected signal: Azure AD AuditLogs: OperationName 'Add member to role' with TargetResources showing the guest account UPN (ending in #EXT# or external domain) and RoleName 'Security Administrator'. InitiatedBy shows the account that executed the Graph API call with its IP address. Graph API calls appear as 'Microsoft Graph' in the InitiatedBy.app field when authenticated via service principal.
References (14)
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1098/003/
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/add-users/about-admin-roles?view=o365-worldwide
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/access_policies.html
- https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/policies
- https://rhinosecuritylabs.com/aws/aws-privilege-escalation-methods-mitigation/
- https://expel.com/blog/incident-report-from-cli-to-console-chasing-an-attacker-in-aws/
- https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/03/22/dev-0537-criminal-actor-targeting-organizations-for-data-exfiltration-and-destruction/
- https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2023/10/25/octo-tempest-crosses-boundaries-to-facilitate-extortion-encryption-and-destruction/
- https://www.invictus-ir.com/news/the-curious-case-of-dangerdev-protonmail-me
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/roles/security-planning
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/role-based-access-control/elevate-access-global-admin
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/privileged-identity-management/pim-configure
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/essentials/activity-log
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/search-the-audit-log-in-security-and-compliance
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