Conditional Access Policies

T1556.009

Sub-technique of T1556 Modify Authentication Process.View on attack.mitre.org

About this technique

Adversaries may disable or modify conditional access policies to enable persistent access to compromised accounts. Conditional access policies are additional verifications used by identity providers and identity and access management systems to determine whether a user should be granted access to a resource.

For example, in Entra ID, Okta, and JumpCloud, users can be denied access to applications based on their IP address, device enrollment status, and use of multi-factor authentication. In some cases, identity providers may also support the use of risk-based metrics to deny sign-ins based on a variety of indicators. In AWS and GCP, IAM policies can contain `condition` attributes that verify arbitrary constraints such as the source IP, the date the request was made, and the nature of the resources or regions being requested. These measures help to prevent compromised credentials from resulting in unauthorized access to data or resources, as well as limit user permissions to only those required.

By modifying conditional access policies, such as adding additional trusted IP ranges, removing Multi-Factor Authentication requirements, or allowing additional Unused/Unsupported Cloud Regions, adversaries may be able to ensure persistent access to accounts and circumvent defensive measures.

Detection rules0

Rules on DetectionCode tagged with T1556.009.

Sigma0

No Sigma rules are mapped to this technique yet.

Splunk0

No Splunk rules are mapped to this technique yet.

Groups2

Software0

None recorded.

Campaigns0

None recorded.

Procedure examples2

Groups2

Used byProcedure example
GroupScattered Spider

Scattered Spider has added additional trusted locations to Azure AD conditional access policies.

GroupStorm-0501

Storm-0501 has registered their own MFA method, and leveraged a victim hybrid joined server to circumvent Conditional Access Policies.

References5

  1. AWS IAM Conditions Open source
    AWS. (n.d.). IAM JSON policy elements: Condition. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
  2. GCP IAM Conditions Open source
    Google Cloud. (n.d.). Overview of IAM Conditions. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
  3. JumpCloud Conditional Access Policies Open source
    JumpCloud. (n.d.). Get Started: Conditional Access Policies. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
  4. Microsoft Conditional Access Open source
    Microsoft. (2023, November 15). What is Conditional Access?. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
  5. Okta Conditional Access Policies Open source
    Okta. (2023, November 30). Conditional Access Based on Device Security Posture. Retrieved January 2, 2024.

Data from MITRE ATT&CK® (Enterprise). ATT&CK® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.