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T1583.007 Serverless

Adversaries may purchase and configure serverless cloud infrastructure, such as Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda functions, or Google Apps Scripts, that can be used during targeting. By utilizing serverless infrastructure, adversaries can make it more difficult to attribute infrastructure used during operations back to them.

Once acquired, the serverless runtime environment can be leveraged to either respond directly to infected machines or to Proxy traffic to an adversary-owned command and control server.314 As traffic generated by these functions will appear to come from subdomains of common cloud providers, it may be difficult to distinguish from ordinary traffic to these providers - making it easier to Hide Infrastructure.23

Item Value
ID T1583.007
Sub-techniques T1583.001, T1583.002, T1583.003, T1583.004, T1583.005, T1583.006, T1583.007, T1583.008
Tactics TA0042
Platforms PRE
Version 1.1
Created 08 July 2022
Last Modified 15 April 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
C0040 APT41 DUST APT41 DUST used infrastructure hosted behind Cloudflare or utilized Cloudflare Workers for command and control.5

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1056 Pre-compromise This technique cannot be easily mitigated with preventive controls since it is based on behaviors performed outside of the scope of enterprise defenses and controls.

References

  1. Adam Chester. (2020, February 25). AWS Lambda Redirector. Retrieved July 8, 2022. ↩

  2. Gary Golomb. (n.d.). Threat Hunting Series: Detecting Command & Control in the Cloud. Retrieved July 8, 2022. ↩

  3. Lawrence Abrams. (2020, March 14). BlackWater Malware Abuses Cloudflare Workers for C2 Communication. Retrieved July 8, 2022. ↩↩

  4. Sergiu Gatlan. (2021, February 18). Hackers abuse Google Apps Script to steal credit cards, bypass CSP. Retrieved July 1, 2024. ↩

  5. Mike Stokkel et al. (2024, July 18). APT41 Has Arisen From the DUST. Retrieved September 16, 2024. ↩

  6. ThreatConnect. (2020, December 15). Infrastructure Research and Hunting: Boiling the Domain Ocean. Retrieved October 12, 2021. ↩