Mandiant's investigation revealed that the attacker employed malicious use of the Serial Console on Azure Virtual Machines (VM) to install third-party remote management software within client environments. This method of attack was unique in that it avoided many of the traditional detection methods employed within Azure and provided the attacker with full administrative access to the VM. Unfortunately, cloud resources are often poorly misunderstood, leading to misconfigurations that can leave these assets vulnerable to attackers. While methods of initial access, lateral movement, and persistence vary from one attacker to another, one thing is clear: Attackers have their eyes on the cloud.

Read More ...