Detect Acquire Infrastructure in Elastic Security
This detection identifies indicators that adversaries have acquired or are leveraging external infrastructure for attack operations — including virtual private servers, bulletproof hosting providers, anonymizing VPN services, and residential proxy networks. Because T1583 is a PRE-ATT&CK technique occurring outside direct victim visibility, detection focuses on observable artifacts within the target environment: authentication events originating from known hosting ASNs and VPN exit nodes, DNS resolution of anonymization service domains, and network connection patterns consistent with adversary use of acquired proxy or VPN infrastructure. High-confidence signals include privileged account sign-ins from hosting provider IP ranges (M247, Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean), automated tooling user-agents accessing organizational resources from VPS IPs, and connections to infrastructure linked to threat actor campaigns such as Kimsuky, Sea Turtle, and Agrius.
MITRE ATT&CK
- Tactic
- Resource Development
- Technique
- T1583 Acquire Infrastructure
- Canonical reference
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1583/
Elastic Detection Query
authentication where event.outcome in ("success", "failure")
and not source.ip in ("127.0.0.1", "::1", "0.0.0.0")
and not cidrMatch(source.ip, "10.0.0.0/8", "192.168.0.0/16", "172.16.0.0/12", "fc00::/7", "fe80::/10")
and (
cidrMatch(source.ip, "185.220.0.0/16", "185.209.0.0/16", "45.83.0.0/16", "194.165.0.0/16", "146.70.0.0/16") or
cidrMatch(source.ip, "167.71.0.0/16", "104.248.0.0/16", "68.183.0.0/16", "159.65.0.0/16", "138.197.0.0/16") or
cidrMatch(source.ip, "95.217.0.0/16", "116.202.0.0/16", "135.181.0.0/16", "65.109.0.0/16", "5.9.0.0/16") or
cidrMatch(source.ip, "51.77.0.0/16", "51.68.0.0/16", "178.32.0.0/16", "54.36.0.0/16", "141.95.0.0/16") or
cidrMatch(source.ip, "45.32.0.0/16", "66.175.0.0/16", "104.156.0.0/16", "207.246.0.0/16") or
cidrMatch(source.ip, "194.5.0.0/16", "93.115.0.0/16", "92.223.0.0/16")
)Detects authentication events (successful and failed) originating from IP ranges associated with known bulletproof hosting providers, VPS providers, and residential proxy networks commonly leveraged as adversary-acquired infrastructure. Covers M247, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, OVH, Vultr, Tor exit nodes, and known proxy ranges. Alerts on logon activity from these ranges to identify adversary pre-positioning or active use of acquired external infrastructure against target identity systems.
Data Sources
Required Tables
False Positives & Tuning
- Legitimate remote employees or contractors using commercial VPN services (e.g., NordVPN, ExpressVPN) whose exit nodes fall in DigitalOcean or Hetzner IP ranges — common for privacy-conscious workers in high-censorship regions.
- Automated CI/CD pipelines or DevOps tooling hosted on cloud providers (GitHub Actions runners, GitLab CI, CircleCI) that authenticate against internal systems from OVH or DigitalOcean egress IPs.
- Vendor or third-party managed services that host their infrastructure on VPS providers and authenticate via service accounts — particularly common with offshore managed security providers.
- IT administrators using jump hosts or bastion servers provisioned in cloud providers to manage remote infrastructure, generating authentication events from VPS IP ranges.
Other platforms for T1583
Testing Methodology
Validate this detection against 3 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 1Simulate VPN Infrastructure Use - DNS Enumeration of Anonymization Services
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 22 (DnsQuery) entries for each queried domain showing QueryName, QueryResults, and the initiating PowerShell process. Also visible in DeviceNetworkEvents (ActionType: DnsQueryResponse) in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.
- Test 2Simulate Authentication from VPS Infrastructure via Proxied HTTP Request
Expected signal: Network connection event from the endpoint to the proxy IP. If authentication proceeds through the proxy, AADSignInLogs will record the VPS IP as the source. Sysmon Event 3 (NetworkConnect) visible for the outbound proxy connection.
- Test 3Cloud Infrastructure Provisioning via Azure CLI (Adversary Infrastructure Simulation)
Expected signal: Azure Activity Log entries: Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/write, Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses/write, Microsoft.Resources/deployments/write. Visible in AzureActivity table in Sentinel and azure:activity sourcetype in Splunk. Also triggers Azure Security Center alerts if Defender for Cloud is enabled.
References (8)
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1583/
- https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/apt43-north-korea-cybercrime
- https://hunt.io/blog/sea-turtle-dns-hijacking
- https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/from-wiper-to-ransomware-the-evolution-of-agrius/
- https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/10/03/cadet-blizzard-emerges-as-a-novel-and-distinct-russian-threat-actor/
- https://www.mandiant.com/resources/unc2165-shifts-to-evade-sanctions
- https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa22-011a
- https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/
Unlock Pro Content
Get the full detection package for T1583 including response playbook, investigation guide, and atomic red team tests.