Azure Activity Logs: High Rate of VM Creations or Deployment Writes

Flags Azure activity log events showing VM creation or deployment write operations occurring at an anomalously high volume.

FreeReviewedSigma · Medium · v5

Product: azure
Service: activitylogs
Author: sawwinnnaung (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2026-07-31

Analysis Detection

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1098Account Manipulation
Priv Esc
- T1098Account Manipulation
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule flags Azure activity log events that include resource creation or deployment write operations for virtual machines and deployments. A high volume of these actions may indicate automated provisioning, persistence setup, or attempts to change infrastructure at scale. Detection relies on Azure activity log telemetry containing the specific write operations for Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines and Microsoft.Resources/deployments.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Route53 Domain Transfer Lock Disabled via Scattered Spider Technique

Suspicious Domain Admin Account Creation via net (via process_creation)

Suspicious Guest Account Privilege Escalation (via process_creation)

Suspicious Login Shell Assigned to Service Account games on Linux

Suspicious dMSA Object Access with Migration AccessMask

Windows HackTool Execution: GoldenDMSA.exe Launch with Directory Manipulation Parameters

Suspicious Compute Instance Metadata Modification in GCP

Suspicious Azure AD Authentication Method Registration for Account Takeover (via azure)

Suspicious EC2 Instance Connect SSH Public Key Push (via cloudtrail)

Azure Activity Logs: High Rate of VM Creations or Deployment Writes

Pivot detection · T1098 · 9 related

Changelog

v5
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v4
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v3
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v2
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v1
No changelog recorded for this version.2026-07-30

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

azure-activity-logs-high-rate-of-vm-creation-or-deployment-writes-d2d901db

title: "Azure Activity Logs: High Rate of VM Creations or Deployment Writes"
id: e6c9bd4c-9775-47e5-b0ff-8104c880ecff
status: test
description: This rule flags Azure activity log events that include resource creation or deployment write operations for virtual machines and deployments. A high volume of these actions may indicate automated provisioning, persistence setup, or attempts to change infrastructure at scale. Detection relies on Azure activity log telemetry containing the specific write operations for Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines and Microsoft.Resources/deployments.
references:
  - https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/blob/e534407884b1ec5371efc9f76ead282176c9e8bb/Detections/AzureActivity/Creating_Anomalous_Number_Of_Resources_detection.yaml
  - https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/master/rules/cloud/azure/activity_logs/azure_creating_number_of_resources_detection.yml
author: sawwinnnaung, Huntrule Team
date: 2020-05-07
modified: 2023-10-11
tags:
  - attack.privilege-escalation
  - attack.persistence
  - attack.t1098
logsource:
  product: azure
  service: activitylogs
detection:
  keywords:
    - Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/write
    - Microsoft.Resources/deployments/write
  condition: keywords
falsepositives:
  - Valid change
level: medium
license: DRL-1.1
related:
  - id: d2d901db-7a75-45a1-bc39-0cbf00812192
    type: derived

Convert

This rule as a query you can run. Uses no unlock credit.

SplunkSPL