T1496.004sub-technique of T1496 Resource Hijacking
Cloud Service Hijacking
SaaSnothing on this site yetT1496.004 on attack.mitre.org
Adversaries may leverage compromised software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to complete resource-intensive tasks, which may impact hosted service availability. For example, adversaries may leverage email and messaging services, such as AWS Simple Email Service (SES), AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS), SendGrid, and Twilio, in order to send large quantities of spam / Phishing emails and SMS messages.
If this is happening now
Checklists and playbooks to open while the alert is still live.
Playbook for this stage
Ransomware, suspected or confirmed
Files renamed or unreadable, a ransom note, or backup deletion commands seen.
how MITRE says to see it
Detection Strategy for Cloud Service Hijacking via SaaS Abuse
- Adversary gains access to cloud-hosted services such as AWS SES, SNS, or OpenAI API, enables or modifies usage policies, and initiates resource-intensive actions (e.g., mass email/SMS or LLM queries), often from unauthorized regions or under anomalous identity conditions.