H3XAOperational intelligence
Live analytical pictureEvidence before assessment
TypeTechnique
External ID—
First seen2026-08-14
Last seen2026-08-14

Confidence

—

Adversaries may compromise third-party Virtual Private Servers (VPSs) that can be used during targeting. There exist a variety of cloud service providers that will sell virtual machines/containers as a service. Adversaries may compromise VPSs purchased by third-party entities. By compromising a VPS to use as infrastructure, adversaries can make it difficult to physically tie back operations to themselves.(Citation: NSA NCSC Turla OilRig) Compromising a VPS for use in later stages of the adversary lifecycle, such as Command and Control, can allow adversaries to benefit from the ubiquity and trust associated with higher reputation cloud service providers as well as that added by the compromised third-party.

6 recorded

Relationships

mitigatesMitigation
subtechnique-ofTechnique
usesCampaign
usesCampaign
uses
from Turla
Group
usesGroup
5 external

References

mitre-attack
T1584.003
open
Koczwara Beacon Hunting Sep 2021
https://michaelkoczwara.medium.com/cobalt-strike-c2-hunting-with-shodan-c448d501a6e2
open
NSA NCSC Turla OilRig
https://media.defense.gov/2019/Oct/18/2002197242/-1/-1/0/NSA_CSA_Turla_20191021%20ver%204%20-%20nsa.gov.pdf
open
Mandiant SCANdalous Jul 2020
https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/scandalous-external-detection-using-network-scan-data-and-automation/
open
ThreatConnect Infrastructure Dec 2020
https://threatconnect.com/blog/infrastructure-research-hunting/
open