Technique on mitre.org

T1578.004: Revert Cloud Instance

An adversary may revert changes made to a cloud instance after they have performed malicious activities in attempt to evade detection and remove evidence of their presence. In highly virtualized environments, such as cloud-based infrastructure, this may be accomplished by restoring virtual machine (VM) or data storage snapshots through the cloud management dashboard or cloud APIs.

Another variation of this technique is to utilize temporary storage attached to the compute instance. Most cloud providers provide various types of storage including persistent, local, and/or ephemeral, with the ephemeral types often reset upon stop/restart of the VM.

Positive Technologies products that cover the technique

MaxPatrol SIEM knowledge base

proxmox: PT-CR-2735: ProxMox_VE_Critical_VM_Container_Manipulation: A user performed an action on a critical VM or container in Proxmox. Such actions allow attackers to hide the evidence of their activity, disrupt system availability or functionality, remove security tools, extract or delete important data, embed backdoors, or perform lateral movement within a network. microsoft_hyperv: PT-CR-2869: HyperV_Critical_VMs_Manipulation: A user performed an action on a critical VM in Hyper-V. This could be an attacker's attempt to disrupt system integrity and availability.

Detection

ID	DS0030	Data source and component	Instance: Instance Metadata	Description	Periodically baseline instances to identify malicious modifications or additions.

ID	DS0030	Data source and component	Instance: Instance Stop	Description	Establish centralized logging of instance activity, which can be used to monitor and review system events even after reverting to a snapshot, rolling back changes, or changing persistence/type of storage. Monitor specifically for events related to deactivation of instances that are occurring outside of planned operations. To reduce false positives, valid change management procedures could introduce a known identifier that is logged with the change (e.g., tag or header) if supported by the cloud provider, to help distinguish valid, expected actions from malicious ones.

ID	DS0030	Data source and component	Instance: Instance Modification	Description	Establish centralized logging of instance activity, which can be used to monitor and review system events even after reverting to a snapshot, rolling back changes, or changing persistence/type of storage. Monitor specifically for events related to snapshots and rollbacks and VM configuration changes, that are occurring outside of normal activity. To reduce false positives, valid change management procedures could introduce a known identifier that is logged with the change (e.g., tag or header) if supported by the cloud provider, to help distinguish valid, expected actions from malicious ones.

ID	DS0030	Data source and component	Instance: Instance Start	Description	Establish centralized logging of instance activity, which can be used to monitor and review system events even after reverting to a snapshot, rolling back changes, or changing persistence/type of storage. Monitor specifically for events related to activation of instances that are occurring outside of normal activity/planned operations. To reduce false positives, valid change management procedures could introduce a known identifier that is logged with the change (e.g., tag or header) if supported by the cloud provider, to help distinguish valid, expected actions from malicious ones.

ID	Data source and component	Description
DS0030	Instance: Instance Metadata	Periodically baseline instances to identify malicious modifications or additions.
DS0030	Instance: Instance Stop	Establish centralized logging of instance activity, which can be used to monitor and review system events even after reverting to a snapshot, rolling back changes, or changing persistence/type of storage. Monitor specifically for events related to deactivation of instances that are occurring outside of planned operations. To reduce false positives, valid change management procedures could introduce a known identifier that is logged with the change (e.g., tag or header) if supported by the cloud provider, to help distinguish valid, expected actions from malicious ones.
DS0030	Instance: Instance Modification	Establish centralized logging of instance activity, which can be used to monitor and review system events even after reverting to a snapshot, rolling back changes, or changing persistence/type of storage. Monitor specifically for events related to snapshots and rollbacks and VM configuration changes, that are occurring outside of normal activity. To reduce false positives, valid change management procedures could introduce a known identifier that is logged with the change (e.g., tag or header) if supported by the cloud provider, to help distinguish valid, expected actions from malicious ones.
DS0030	Instance: Instance Start	Establish centralized logging of instance activity, which can be used to monitor and review system events even after reverting to a snapshot, rolling back changes, or changing persistence/type of storage. Monitor specifically for events related to activation of instances that are occurring outside of normal activity/planned operations. To reduce false positives, valid change management procedures could introduce a known identifier that is logged with the change (e.g., tag or header) if supported by the cloud provider, to help distinguish valid, expected actions from malicious ones.