Suspicious Azure CLI Disk Snapshot and Copy for Data Theft

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → Collection

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1578.001Create Snapshot
- T1578.002Create Cloud Instance
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
- T1005Data from Local System
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects Azure CLI commands that create a managed disk snapshot or clone a disk from an existing source. It maps to cloud data theft where an attacker snapshots a target VM disk and attaches a copy to an unmonitored instance to read its contents. Detecting it exposes disk exfiltration through the cloud control plane.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1005 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious BoryptGrab Infostealer Staging Directory (via file_event)

Suspicious Compute Disk IAM Policy Modification Granting Owner Role via GCP Audit

Suspicious Astaroth Spambot Browser Profile Staging Directory (via file_event)

Suspicious EBS Snapshot Shared With External Account via CloudTrail

Suspicious Browser and Wallet Credential Theft via JavaScript Stealer

Suspicious WhatsAppBackup Data Staging Archive Creation

Suspicious Environment File Credential Search via findstr (via process_creation)

Suspicious RDP Bitmap Cache Temp Files Written by mstsc in Rogue RDP Campaign (via file_event)

Windows Script Interpreter Launching trufflehog or gitleaks Credential Scanner

Suspicious Azure CLI Disk Snapshot and Copy for Data Theft

Pivot detection · T1005 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →