T1204.003sub-technique of T1204 User Execution
Malicious Image
IaaS · Containersnothing on this site yetT1204.003 on attack.mitre.org
Adversaries may rely on a user running a malicious image to facilitate execution. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Images, and Azure Images as well as popular container runtimes such as Docker can be backdoored.
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
User Execution – Malicious Image (containers & IaaS) – pull/run → start → anomalous behavior (T1204.003)
- CONTAINERS (Docker/K8s/containerd): A user pulls an untrusted image from a public/unknown registry and then creates/starts a container from that image. Shortly after start, the container spawns unexpected utilities (e.g., curl/wget/bash/python), or makes outbound network connections atypical for the...
- IAAS (Cloud images/VMs): A new VM/instance is launched from a non-approved or newly-seen image (AMI/GCP Image/Azure Image). On first boot, cloud-init/user-data or embedded agents download code, spawn system utilities, or open outbound C2/mining traffic.
what reduces it
- M1031 Network Intrusion Prevention. Network prevention intrusion systems and systems designed to scan and remove malicious downloads can be used to block activity.
- M1017 User Training. Train users to be aware of the existence of malicious images and how to avoid deploying instances and containers from them.
- M1045 Code Signing. Utilize a trust model such as Docker Content Trust with digital signatures to ensure runtime verification of the integrity and publisher of specific image tags.
- M1047 Audit. Audit images deployed within the environment to ensure they do not contain any malicious components.