T1136.003sub-technique of T1136 Create Account
Cloud Account
IaaS · SaaS · Office Suite · Identity Providernothing on this site yetT1136.003 on attack.mitre.org
Adversaries may create a cloud account to maintain access to victim systems. With a sufficient level of access, such accounts may be used to establish secondary credentialed access that does not require persistent remote access tools to be deployed on the system. In addition to user accounts, cloud accounts may be associated with services. Cloud providers handle the concept of service accounts in different ways.
If this is happening now
Checklists and playbooks to open while the alert is still live.
Playbook for this stage
Suspicious execution on an endpoint
An EDR alert, an unexplained process, or a user reporting something odd.
how MITRE says to see it
Detection Strategy for T1136.003 - Cloud Account Creation across IaaS, IdP, SaaS, Office
- Adversaries create user accounts via identity provider APIs or admin portals (e.g., Azure AD, Okta). These accounts may be assigned elevated privileges or used in chained authentication. Detection monitors Add User activity from suspicious IPs or automation sources, followed by role/permission escalation.
- Adversaries use cloud API, CLI, or console to create IAM users or roles. Initial CreateUser is followed by policy/role attachment. Detection monitors temporal chains involving IAM:CreateUser, AttachUserPolicy, and credential generation, especially from automation or foreign IP ranges.
- Adversaries create SaaS accounts via admin dashboards or integrations (e.g., Zoom, Salesforce, Slack). Monitor lifecycle.create or account provisioning events from non-standard sources or times.
- Adversaries leverage M365 or Google Workspace APIs to create users, service accounts, or guest accounts. Follow-on behaviors include login activity, role escalation, or service principal token generation.
what reduces it
- M1030 Network Segmentation. Configure access controls and firewalls to limit access to critical systems and domain controllers. Most cloud environments support separate virtual private cloud (VPC) instances that enable further segmentation of cloud systems.
- M1026 Privileged Account Management. Limit the number of accounts with permissions to create other accounts. Do not allow privileged accounts to be used for day-to-day operations that may expose them to potential adversaries on unprivileged systems.
- M1032 Multi-factor Authentication. Use multi-factor authentication for user and privileged accounts.