Cloud Administration Command T1651
Tactic: Execution
Adversaries may abuse cloud management services to execute commands within virtual machines. Resources such as AWS Systems Manager, Azure RunCommand, and Runbooks allow users to remotely run scripts in virtual machines by leveraging installed virtual machine agents.
Events covered
9 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| 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 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 5156 | The Windows Filtering Platform has permitted a connection. |
| Defender-DeviceFileEvents | FileCreated | File created |
| Defender-DeviceNetworkEvents | ConnectionSuccess | Connection succeeded |
| ESF | exec | Process Execution (Notify) |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 22 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 (57 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 (160 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.
Exclusions (47 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude 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.
Elastic 11 rules
- AWS EC2 LOLBin Execution via SSM SendCommand
- AWS SSM `SendCommand` Execution by Rare User
- AWS SSM `SendCommand` with Run Shell Command Parameters
- AWS SSM Command Document Created by Rare User
- AWS SSM Session Manager Child Process Execution
- Azure Compute VM Command Executed
- Azure Run Command Correlated with Process Execution
- Azure Run Command Script Child Process
- Azure VM Extension Deployment by User
- First Time AWS CloudFormation Stack Creation
- GCP Pub/Sub Topic Creation
Kusto 9 rules
- AWSCloudTrail - Suspicious command sent to EC2
- Detect Custom Script or Run Command deployment by risky user
- Detect entra token request via specific BOF (IOC based)
- Detect executable drops via Azure custom script extension
- Detect first time Azure Custom Script or Run Command deployment
- Detect non-admin requesting token for admin applications
- Detect process drops via Azure Custom Script Extension performing lateral movement
- Detect suspicious foci token logins
- Detect suspicious foci token logins V2