Implant Internal Image
- ID
- T1525
- Tactics
- TA0003 Persistence
- Platforms
- IaaS, Containers
- Data sources
- Image Creation, Image Modification, Instance Start
- Source
- attack.mitre.org
- MITRE last modified
- 25 Oct 2025
Adversaries may implant cloud or container images with malicious code to establish persistence after gaining access to an environment. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Images, and Azure Images as well as popular container runtimes such as Docker can be implanted or backdoored. Unlike Upload Malware, this technique focuses on adversaries implanting an image in a registry within a victim’s environment. Depending on how the infrastructure is provisioned, this could provide persistent access if the infrastructure provisioning tool is instructed to always use the latest image.[3]
A tool has been developed to facilitate planting backdoors in cloud container images.[4] If an adversary has access to a compromised AWS instance, and permissions to list the available container images, they may implant a backdoor such as a Web Shell.[3]
Detection
- DET0334 Detection Strategy for T1525 – Implant Internal Image
Data components: Image Creation, Image Modification, Instance Start
Mitigations (3)
- M1026 Privileged Account Management
Limit permissions associated with creating and modifying platform images or containers based on the principle of least privilege.
- M1045 Code Signing
Several cloud service providers support content trust models that require container images be signed by trusted sources.[1][2]
- M1047 Audit
Periodically check the integrity of images and containers used in cloud deployments to ensure they have not been modified to include malicious software.
References
- Content trust in Azure Container Registry
- Content trust in Docker
- Rhino Labs Cloud Image Backdoor Technique Sept 2019
- Rhino Labs Cloud Backdoor September 2019