Malicious Snowflake Bulk Data Exfiltration via External Stage COPY INTO (via cloud)

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
snowflake
Service
query_history
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-13
Updated
2026-10-13

ATT&CK techniques

Collection → Exfiltration
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. C2

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects Snowflake query activity that stages an entire table into a temporary stage and copies it out with GZIP compression, matching the UNC5537 exfiltration playbook that used CREATE TEMPORARY STAGE followed by COPY INTO and GET to pull data from compromised customer instances. Bulk staged exports are a hallmark of Snowflake data theft and extortion operations.

Related detections9 linkedT1567.002 — drag to rearrange
Possible C2 via Google Sheets API Using Formula Render Option by GRIDTIDE
Suspicious Rclone Data Transfer to Cloud Storage (via process_creation)
Suspicious Microsoft 365 File Download with Scripting User Agent and Spoofed Office Client (via m365)
Suspicious SharePoint Search Queries for Sensitive Documents
Suspicious SharePoint File Download Using PowerShell User Agent
Suspicious FortiManager Config Archive Written to /tmp/.tm During CVE-2024-47575 Exploitation (via file_event)
Suspicious Salesforce Bulk Data Extraction via Bulk and Report APIs
Suspicious Masqueraded Exfiltration Utility AuditSvc Execution (via process_creation)
Suspicious Cloud Exfiltration via Rclone Linked to INC Ransomware
Malicious Snowflake Bulk Data Exfiltration via External Stage COPY INTO (via cloud)
Pivot detection · T1567.002 · 9 related

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