Classification:

attack

Tactic:

TA0005-defense-evasion

Technique:

T1535-unused-or-unsupported-cloud-regions

VIEW RULE IN DATADOG VIEW SIGNALS

Goal

Detect when additional AWS regions have been enabled.

Strategy

Monitor CloudTrail and detect when additional AWS regions have been enabled. Attackers may enable additional regions to allow for the creation of a greater number of resources like EC2 instances or ECS clusters for the purpose of cryptomining.

Triage and response

1. Determine if the API call: {{@evt.name}} should have been made by the user: {{@userIdentity.arn}} from this IP address: {{@network.client.ip}} .
2. If the action is legitimate, consider including the user in a suppression list. See [Best practices for creating detection rules with Datadog Cloud SIEM][3] for more information.
3. If the action shouldn’t have happened:
   • Contact the user: {{@userIdentity.arn}} and see if they made the API call.
   • Use the Cloud SIEM - User Investigation dashboard to see if the user {{@userIdentity.arn}} has taken other actions.
   • Use the Cloud SIEM - IP Investigation dashboard to see if there’s more traffic from the IP {{@network.client.ip}}.
4. If the results of the triage indicate that an attacker has taken the action, initiate your company’s incident response process, as well as an investigation.