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T1651 Cloud Administration Command

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. 13

If an adversary gains administrative access to a cloud environment, they may be able to abuse cloud management services to execute commands in the environment’s virtual machines. Additionally, an adversary that compromises a service provider or delegated administrator account may similarly be able to leverage a Trusted Relationship to execute commands in connected virtual machines.2

Item Value
ID T1651
Sub-techniques
Tactics TA0002
Platforms IaaS
Version 2.1
Created 13 March 2023
Last Modified 15 April 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
S0677 AADInternals AADInternals can execute commands on Azure virtual machines using the VM agent.5
G0016 APT29 APT29 has used Azure Run Command and Azure Admin-on-Behalf-of (AOBO) to execute code on virtual machines.2
S1091 Pacu Pacu can run commands on EC2 instances using AWS Systems Manager Run Command.6

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1026 Privileged Account Management Limit the number of cloud accounts with permissions to remotely execute commands on virtual machines, and ensure that these are not used for day-to-day operations. In Azure, limit the number of accounts with the roles Azure Virtual Machine Contributer and above, and consider using temporary Just-in-Time (JIT) roles to avoid permanently assigning privileged access to virtual machines.4

References

  1. AWS. (n.d.). AWS Systems Manager Run Command. Retrieved March 13, 2023. ↩

  2. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center. (2021, October 25). NOBELIUM targeting delegated administrative privileges to facilitate broader attacks. Retrieved March 25, 2022. ↩↩

  3. Microsoft. (2023, March 10). Run scripts in your VM by using Run Command. Retrieved March 13, 2023. ↩

  4. Adrien Bataille, Anders Vejlby, Jared Scott Wilson, and Nader Zaveri. (2021, December 14). Azure Run Command for Dummies. Retrieved March 13, 2023. ↩

  5. Dr. Nestori Syynimaa. (2020, June 4). Getting root access to Azure VMs as a Azure AD Global Administrator. Retrieved March 13, 2023. ↩

  6. Rhino Security Labs. (2019, August 22). Pacu. Retrieved October 17, 2019. ↩