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ATT&CK Technique

Cloud Secrets Management Stores

T1555.006 · credential-access

Adversaries may acquire credentials from cloud-native secret management solutions such as AWS Secrets Manager, GCP Secret Manager, Azure Key Vault, and Terraform Vault. Secrets managers support the secure centralized management of passwords, API keys, and other credential material. Where secrets managers are in use, cloud services can dynamically acquire credentials via API requests rather than accessing secrets insecurely stored in plain text files or environment variables.

If an adversary is able to gain sufficient privileges in a cloud environment - for example, by obtaining the credentials of high-privileged Cloud Accounts or compromising a service that has permission to retrieve secrets - they may be able to request secrets from the secrets manager. This can be accomplished via commands such as get-secret-value in AWS, gcloud secrets describe in GCP, and az key vault secret show in Azure. Note: this technique is distinct from Cloud Instance Metadata API in that the credentials are being directly requested from the cloud secrets manager, rather than through the medium of the instance metadata API.

IaaS

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Actors Using This

1

chinaSilk Typhoon

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Atomic Tests

1

Executable Atomic Red Team test cases for exercising this technique in a lab. Copy a command, run it on the listed platform, confirm your detections fire.

powershellelevatediaas:azureAzure - Dump All Azure Key Vaults with Microburst

Upon successful execution of this test, the names, locations, and contents of key vaults within an Azure account will be output to a file. See - https://www.netspi.com/blog/technical/cloud-penetration-testing/a-beginners-guide-to-gathering-azure-passwords/

import-module "PathToAtomicsFolder\..\ExternalPayloads\Get-AzurePasswords.ps1"
$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "#{password}" -AsPlainText -Force
$Credential = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList "#{username}", $Password
Connect-AzureRmAccount -Credential $Credential
Get-AzurePasswords -subscription '#{subscription_id}' > #{output_file}
cat #{output_file}

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Mitigations

1

MITRE ATT&CK mitigations - vendor-agnostic guidance for reducing exposure to this technique.

M1026Privileged Account Management

Privileged Account Management focuses on implementing policies, controls, and tools to securely manage privileged accounts (e.g., SYSTEM, root, or administrative accounts). This includes restricting access, limiting the scope of permissions, monitoring privileged account usage, and ensuring accountability through logging and auditing.

Account Permissions and Roles

Implement RBAC and least privilege principles to allocate permissions securely.
Use tools like Active Directory Group Policies to enforce access restrictions.

Credential Security

Deploy password vaulting tools like CyberArk, HashiCorp Vault, or KeePass for secure storage and rotation of credentials.
Enforce password policies for complexity, uniqueness, and expiration using tools like Microsoft Group Policy Objects (GPO).

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Enforce MFA for all privileged accounts using Duo Security, Okta, or Microsoft Azure AD MFA.

Privileged Access Management (PAM)

Use PAM solutions like CyberArk, BeyondTrust, or Thycotic to manage, monitor, and audit privileged access.

Auditing and Monitoring

Integrate activity monitoring into your SIEM (e.g., Splunk or QRadar) to detect and alert on anomalous privileged account usage.

Just-In-Time Access

Deploy JIT solutions like Azure Privileged Identity Management (PIM) or configure ephemeral roles in AWS and GCP to grant time-limited elevated permissions.

Tools for Implementation Privileged Access Management (PAM)

CyberArk, BeyondTrust, Thycotic, HashiCorp Vault.

Credential Management

Microsoft LAPS (Local Admin Password Solution), Password Safe, HashiCorp Vault, KeePass.

Multi-Factor Authentication

Duo Security, Okta, Microsoft Azure MFA, Google Authenticator.

Linux Privilege Management

sudo configuration, SELinux, AppArmor.

Just-In-Time Access

Azure Privileged Identity Management (PIM), AWS IAM Roles with session constraints, GCP Identity-Aware Proxy.

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Detection Coverage

0/6 layers

Coverage across standard detection surfaces. Rows marked none have no rule of that type mapped. Some are real blind spots worth closing; others are simply not applicable to this technique (e.g. YARA matches malware files, not network behaviour).

Behavioral / log (Sigma) none

Analytics (MITRE CAR) none

Runtime / container (Falco) none

File / malware (YARA) none

Network (Suricata/Snort) none

Vuln scan (Nuclei) none

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Comply & Defend

NIST 800-53AC-02, AC-03, AC-06, CM-07

Intelligence Graph · click any node to traverse

CVETechnique ActorTool Family

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External lookups - second-class, for what we don’t hold ourselves

MITRE ATT&CK Atomic Red Team car (MITRE)

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