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Cloud Service Discovery (T1526) is a MITRE ATT&CK technique associated with Discovery . An adversary may attempt to enumerate the cloud services running on a system after gaining access.
Cloud Service Discovery (T1526) is a MITRE ATT&CK technique associated with Discovery. An adversary may attempt to enumerate the cloud services running on a system after gaining access.
Attackers use Cloud Service Discovery because it provides a reliable way to advance their objective within the Discovery tactic, often with a favorable balance of impact versus detectability on IaaS, Identity Provider, Office Suite, SaaS environments. Defenders should assess this behavior in the context of the affected platform and adjacent activity rather than treating it as a standalone indicator.
An adversary may attempt to enumerate the cloud services running on a system after gaining access. These methods can differ from platform-as-a-service (PaaS), to infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), or software-as-a-service (SaaS). Many services exist throughout the various cloud providers and can include Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), Lambda Functions, Entra ID, etc. They may also include security services, such as AWS GuardDuty and Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and logging services, such as AWS CloudTrail and Google Cloud Audit Logs.
Adversaries may attempt to discover information about the services enabled throughout the environment. Azure tools and APIs, such as the Microsoft Graph API and Azure Resource Manager API, can enumerate resources and services, including applications, management groups, resources and policy definitions, and their relationships that are accessible by an identity.(Citation: Azure - Resource Manager API)(Citation: Azure AD Graph API)
For example, Stormspotter is an open source tool for enumerating and constructing a graph for Azure resources and services, and Pacu is an open source AWS exploitation framework that supports several methods for discovering cloud services.(Citation: Azure - Stormspotter)(Citation: GitHub Pacu)
Adversaries may use the information gained to shape follow-on behaviors, such as targeting data or credentials from enumerated services or evading identified defenses through Disable or Modify Tools or Disable or Modify Cloud Log.
No universal command represents Cloud Service Discovery. Capture the exact command line, arguments, parent process, account, host, and execution time from the investigated environment; do not operationalize unverified examples.
| Event ID | Log Channel | What It Indicates |
|---|---|---|
| Not universally applicable | Validate platform coverage | This technique may not produce a Windows event; use telemetry native to the affected platform. |
| Sysmon Event ID | Name | Why It's Relevant Here |
|---|---|---|
| Environment-specific | Validate configured telemetry | Use process, network, file, registry, DNS, or image-load telemetry only when relevant and enabled. |
No MITRE detection guidance published for this technique.
Relevant ATT&CK Data Sources: N/A
A universal Sigma rule would create unreliable results because this technique has no single guaranteed observable. Build detection logic from a documented behavior and supported data source, scope it to the affected platform, and validate it against benign administrative activity before deployment.
Start with the data sources named in the detection section. Scope searches by asset, identity, and time window; correlate the primary behavior with preceding access and subsequent actions. A portable query is intentionally not provided where the technique lacks a universal schema or observable.
No MITRE mitigations mapped to this technique.