Malicious Image
Where this stands
A reviewer read the telemetry and concluded there is nothing here to detect that a sibling technique does not already cover.
The event that defines the technique -- a backdoored image being pulled, deployed or launched -- has no log source in this brief at all. Neither analytic offers a control-plane feed (no container registry or image-pull source, no cloud RunInstances/audit source); both point only at in-guest or in-container process execution, which is downstream behaviour common to malicious and benign images alike, and the attribute that separates the two lives entirely in knobs the log sources cannot carry. AN0691's sigmaLogsource is process_creation/linux, and its own text qualifies the match as a 'process in container namespace' pulled from an untrusted registry (ImageRegistryAllowList, NamespaceScope). […]
What the technique is
Adversaries may rely on a user running a malicious image to facilitate execution. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Images, and Azure Images as well as popular container runtimes such as Docker can be backdoored. Backdoored images may be uploaded to a public repository via Upload Malware, and users may then download and deploy an instance or container from the image without realizing the image is malicious, thus bypassing techniques that specifically achieve Initial Access. This can lead to the execution of malicious code, such as code that executes cryptocurrency mining, in the instance or container. Adversaries may also name images a certain way to increase the chance of users mistakenly deploying an instance or container from the image (ex: Match Legitimate Resource Name or Location).
Read it on attack.mitre.orgWhat MITRE says you would watch
- AN0691
CONTAINERS (Docker/K8s/containerd): A user pulls an untrusted image from a public/unknown registry and then creates/starts a container from that image. Shortly after start, the container spawns unexpected utilities (e.g., curl/wget/bash/python), or makes outbound network connections atypical for the namespace/workload. The analytic correlates Image Creation/Download → Container Creation → Container Start → Command Execution/Network activity within a short window and with a consistent image digest.
- AN0692
IAAS (Cloud images/VMs): A new VM/instance is launched from a non-approved or newly-seen image (AMI/GCP Image/Azure Image). On first boot, cloud-init/user-data or embedded agents download code, spawn system utilities, or open outbound C2/mining traffic. The analytic correlates Instance/Image Creation → Instance Start → in-guest Process/Command Execution and/or anomalous network traffic.
Technique names and descriptions © MITRE ATT&CK®, CC BY 4.0. Not endorsed by MITRE.