- Tactics
- defense-impairment
- Platforms
- IaaS
- Reference
- attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1578.001
Description
An adversary may create a snapshot or data backup within a cloud account to evade defenses. A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of an existing cloud compute component such as a virtual machine (VM), virtual hard drive, or volume. An adversary may leverage permissions to create a snapshot in order to bypass restrictions that prevent access to existing compute service infrastructure, unlike in Revert Cloud Instance where an adversary may revert to a snapshot to evade detection and remove evidence of their presence.
An adversary may Create Cloud Instance, mount one or more created snapshots to that instance, and then apply a policy that allows the adversary access to the created instance, such as a firewall policy that allows them inbound and outbound SSH access.(Citation: Mandiant M-Trends 2020)
How GTK Cyber trains on this
GTK Cyber's Threat Hunting with Data Science course teaches you to build machine-learning detections for techniques like this across the MITRE ATT&CK framework, including the defense-impairment tactic this technique falls under. Practitioner-led, focused on real detections, not memorizing technique IDs.
Related techniques
- T1112 - Modify Registry
- T1207 - Rogue Domain Controller
- T1222 - File and Directory Permissions Modification
- T1484 - Domain or Tenant Policy Modification
- T1553 - Subvert Trust Controls
- T1556 - Modify Authentication Process
- T1578 - Modify Cloud Compute Infrastructure
- T1599 - Network Boundary Bridging
- T1600 - Weaken Encryption
- T1601 - Modify System Image
- T1647 - Plist File Modification
- T1666 - Modify Cloud Resource Hierarchy