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T1530 Data from Cloud Storage

Adversaries may access data from improperly secured cloud storage.

Many cloud service providers offer solutions for online data object storage such as Amazon S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage. These solutions differ from other storage solutions (such as SQL or Elasticsearch) in that there is no overarching application. Data from these solutions can be retrieved directly using the cloud provider’s APIs.

In other cases, SaaS application providers such as Slack, Confluence, and Salesforce also provide cloud storage solutions as a peripheral use case of their platform. These cloud objects can be extracted directly from their associated application.41710

Adversaries may collect sensitive data from these cloud storage solutions. Providers typically offer security guides to help end users configure systems, though misconfigurations are a common problem.236 There have been numerous incidents where cloud storage has been improperly secured, typically by unintentionally allowing public access to unauthenticated users, overly-broad access by all users, or even access for any anonymous person outside the control of the Identity Access Management system without even needing basic user permissions.

This open access may expose various types of sensitive data, such as credit cards, personally identifiable information, or medical records.11589

Adversaries may also obtain then abuse leaked credentials from source repositories, logs, or other means as a way to gain access to cloud storage objects.

Item Value
ID T1530
Sub-techniques
Tactics TA0009
Platforms IaaS, SaaS
Version 2.0
Created 30 August 2019
Last Modified 18 October 2022

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0117 Fox Kitten Fox Kitten has obtained files from the victim’s cloud storage instances.15
S0683 Peirates Peirates can dump the contents of AWS S3 buckets. It can also retrieve service account tokens from kOps buckets in Google Cloud Storage or S3.14

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1047 Audit Frequently check permissions on cloud storage to ensure proper permissions are set to deny open or unprivileged access to resources.2
M1041 Encrypt Sensitive Information Encrypt data stored at rest in cloud storage.23 Managed encryption keys can be rotated by most providers. At a minimum, ensure an incident response plan to storage breach includes rotating the keys and test for impact on client applications.13
M1037 Filter Network Traffic Cloud service providers support IP-based restrictions when accessing cloud resources. Consider using IP allowlisting along with user account management to ensure that data access is restricted not only to valid users but only from expected IP ranges to mitigate the use of stolen credentials to access data.
M1032 Multi-factor Authentication Consider using multi-factor authentication to restrict access to resources and cloud storage APIs.2
M1022 Restrict File and Directory Permissions Use access control lists on storage systems and objects.
M1018 User Account Management Configure user permissions groups and roles for access to cloud storage.3 Implement strict Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls to prevent access to storage solutions except for the applications, users, and services that require access.2 Ensure that temporary access tokens are issued rather than permanent credentials, especially when access is being granted to entities outside of the internal security boundary.12

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component
DS0010 Cloud Storage Cloud Storage Access

References

  1. Drew Todd. (2021, December 28). How Secure Is Your Slack Channel?. Retrieved May 31, 2022. ↩

  2. Amazon. (2019, May 17). How can I secure the files in my Amazon S3 bucket?. Retrieved October 4, 2019. ↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Amlekar, M., Brooks, C., Claman, L., et. al.. (2019, March 20). Azure Storage security guide. Retrieved October 4, 2019. ↩↩↩

  4. Anthony Spadafora. (2021, June 11). EA hack reportedly used stolen cookies and Slack to target gaming giant. Retrieved May 31, 2022. ↩

  5. Barrett, B.. (2019, July 11). Hack Brief: A Card-Skimming Hacker Group Hit 17K Domains—and Counting. Retrieved October 4, 2019. ↩

  6. Google. (2019, September 16). Best practices for Cloud Storage. Retrieved October 4, 2019. ↩

  7. Hananel Livneh. (2022, April 7). Into the Breach: Breaking Down 3 SaaS App Cyber Attacks in 2022. Retrieved May 31, 2022. ↩

  8. HIPAA Journal. (2017, October 11). 47GB of Medical Records and Test Results Found in Unsecured Amazon S3 Bucket. Retrieved October 4, 2019. ↩

  9. Justin Schoenfeld, Aaron Didier. (2021, May 4). Transferring leverage in a ransomware attack. Retrieved July 14, 2022. ↩

  10. Martin Mulazzani, Sebastian Schrittwieser, Manuel Leithner, Markus Huber, and Edgar Weippl. (2011, August). Dark Clouds on the Horizon: Using Cloud Storage as Attack Vector and Online Slack Space. Retrieved July 14, 2022. ↩

  11. Trend Micro. (2017, November 6). A Misconfigured Amazon S3 Exposed Almost 50 Thousand PII in Australia. Retrieved October 4, 2019. ↩

  12. Amazon. (n.d.). Temporary Security Credentials. Retrieved October 18, 2019. ↩

  13. Google. (n.d.). Key rotation. Retrieved October 18, 2019. ↩

  14. InGuardians. (2022, January 5). Peirates GitHub. Retrieved February 8, 2022. ↩

  15. CISA. (2020, September 15). Iran-Based Threat Actor Exploits VPN Vulnerabilities. Retrieved December 21, 2020. ↩