Remote Services: Direct Cloud VM Connections T1021.008
Tactic: Lateral Movement
Adversaries may leverage Valid Accounts to log directly into accessible cloud hosted compute infrastructure through cloud native methods. Many cloud providers offer interactive connections to virtual infrastructure that can be accessed through the Cloud API, such as Azure Serial Console, AWS EC2 Instance Connect, and AWS System Manager..
Events covered
6 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 3 | Network connection |
| Sysmon | Event ID 11 | FileCreate |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4663 | An attempt was made to access an object. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 5156 | The Windows Filtering Platform has permitted a connection. |
| Defender-DeviceFileEvents | FileCreated | File created |
| Defender-DeviceNetworkEvents | ConnectionSuccess | Connection succeeded |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 4 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (10 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (30 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.