CyberStack

MITRE ATT&CK / Techniques / T1078.004

Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts

ID
T1078.004
Tactics
TA0001 Initial Access, TA0003 Persistence, TA0004 Privilege Escalation, TA0005 Stealth
Sub-technique of
T1078 Valid Accounts
Platforms
IaaS, Identity Provider, Office Suite, SaaS
Data sources
User Account Authentication, Logon Session Metadata, Logon Session Creation
Source
attack.mitre.org
MITRE last modified
12 May 2026

Valid accounts in cloud environments may allow adversaries to perform actions to achieve Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Cloud accounts are those created and configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration of resources within a cloud service provider or SaaS application. Cloud Accounts can exist solely in the cloud; alternatively, they may be hybrid-joined between on-premises systems and the cloud through syncing or federation with other identity sources such as Windows Active Directory.[7][8][9]

Service or user accounts may be targeted by adversaries through Brute Force, Phishing, or various other means to gain access to the environment. Federated or synced accounts may be a pathway for the adversary to affect both on-premises systems and cloud environments - for example, by leveraging shared credentials to log onto Remote Services. High privileged cloud accounts, whether federated, synced, or cloud-only, may also allow pivoting to on-premises environments by leveraging SaaS-based Software Deployment Tools to run commands on hybrid-joined devices.

An adversary may create long lasting Additional Cloud Credentials on a compromised cloud account to maintain persistence in the environment. Such credentials may also be used to bypass security controls such as multi-factor authentication.

Cloud accounts may also be able to assume Temporary Elevated Cloud Access or other privileges through various means within the environment. Misconfigurations in role assignments or role assumption policies may allow an adversary to use these mechanisms to leverage permissions outside the intended scope of the account. Such over privileged accounts may be used to harvest sensitive data from online storage accounts and databases through Cloud API or other methods. For example, in Azure environments, adversaries may target Azure Managed Identities, which allow associated Azure resources to request access tokens. By compromising a resource with an attached Managed Identity, such as an Azure VM, adversaries may be able to Steal Application Access Tokens to move laterally across the cloud environment.[10]

Detection

Mitigations (7)

M1015 Active Directory Configuration

Disable legacy authentication, which does not support MFA, and require the use of modern authentication protocols instead.

M1017 User Training

Applications may send push notifications to verify a login as a form of multi-factor authentication (MFA). Train users to only accept valid push notifications and to report suspicious push notifications.

M1018 User Account Management

Periodically review user accounts and remove those that are inactive or unnecessary. Limit the ability for user accounts to create additional accounts.

M1026 Privileged Account Management

Review privileged cloud account permission levels routinely to look for those that could allow an adversary to gain wide access, such as Global Administrator and Privileged Role Administrator in Azure AD.[1][2][3] These reviews should also check if new privileged cloud accounts have been created that were not authorized. For example, in Azure AD environments configure alerts to notify when accounts have gone many days without using privileged roles, as these roles may be able to be removed.[4] Consider using temporary, just-in-time (JIT) privileged access to Azure AD resources rather than permanently assigning privileged roles.[3]

M1027 Password Policies

Ensure that cloud accounts, particularly privileged accounts, have complex, unique passwords across all systems on the network. Passwords and access keys should be rotated regularly. This limits the amount of time credentials can be used to access resources if a credential is compromised without your knowledge. Cloud service providers may track access key age to help audit and identify keys that may need to be rotated.[5]

M1032 Multi-factor Authentication

Use multi-factor authentication for cloud accounts, especially privileged accounts. This can be implemented in a variety of forms (e.g. hardware, virtual, SMS), and can also be audited using administrative reporting features.[5]

M1036 Account Use Policies

Use conditional access policies to block logins from non-compliant devices or from outside defined organization IP ranges.[6]

Groups (14)

Software (6)

References

  1. TechNet Credential Theft
  2. TechNet Least Privilege
  3. Microsoft Azure security baseline for Azure Active Directory
  4. Microsoft Security Alerts for Azure AD Roles
  5. AWS - IAM Console Best Practices
  6. Microsoft Common Conditional Access Policies
  7. AWS Identity Federation
  8. Google Federating GC
  9. Microsoft Deploying AD Federation
  10. SpecterOps Managed Identity 2022