12 ways attackers abuse cloud services to hack your enterprise
Summary
Attackers are increasingly leveraging trusted SaaS platforms, cloud infrastructure, and identity systems to disguise malicious activity as legitimate enterprise traffic. This 'living off the cloud' trend involves using services like OpenAI and AWS for command and control, bypassing traditional defenses that rely on domain reputation and static blocklists. By abusing native cloud administrative tools, APIs, and management consoles, adversaries can enumerate resources, extract data, and maintain persistence with seemingly routine administrative calls.
IFF Assessment
This article describes evolving attacker techniques that make detection more difficult for defenders by blending in with legitimate cloud traffic.
Defender Context
Defenders need to be aware of attackers abusing cloud services for command and control and other malicious activities. This requires enhanced monitoring of cloud environments and focusing on detecting anomalous behavior within legitimate cloud services rather than solely relying on blocklists.