T1098.006SubTechniquepersistenceprivilege-escalationagent-callable

T1098.006Additional Container Cluster Roles

Sub-technique of T1098

Platforms: Containers

ATT&CK version: 14.1

What it is

An adversary may add additional roles or permissions to an adversary-controlled user or service account to maintain persistent access to a container orchestration system. For example, an adversary with sufficient permissions may create a RoleBinding or a ClusterRoleBinding to bind a Role or ClusterRole to a Kubernetes account.(Citation: Kubernetes RBAC)(Citation: Aquasec Kubernetes Attack 2023) Where attribute-based access control (ABAC) is in use, an adversary with sufficient permissions may modify a Kubernetes ABAC policy to give the target account additional permissions.(Citation: Kuberentes ABAC) This account modification may immediately follow [Create Account](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1136) or other malicious account activity. Adversaries may also modify existing [Valid Accounts](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1078) that they have compromised. Note that where container orchestration systems are deployed in cloud environments, as with Google Kubernetes Engine, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, and Azure Kubernetes Service, cloud-based role-based access control (RBAC) assignments or ABAC policies can often be used in place of or in addition to local permission assignments.(Citation: Google Cloud Kubernetes IAM)(Citation: AWS EKS IAM Roles for Service Accounts)(Citation: Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service Service Accounts) In these cases, this technique may be used in conjunction with [Additional Cloud Roles](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1098/003).

ATT&CK tactics· 2

PersistencePrivilege Escalation

References

  1. https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1098/006
  2. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/iam-roles-for-service-accounts.html
  3. https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/iam
  4. https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/abac/
  5. https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/security/rbac-good-practices/
  6. https://blog.aquasec.com/leveraging-kubernetes-rbac-to-backdoor-clusters
  7. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/concepts-identity
Sourced from MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v14.1. Curated and contextualized for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.