Platforms / Security resources

MITRE ATT&CK

Enterprise v20 / 15 tactics / 227 techniques / 479 sub-techniques

Defense Impairment / T1578.002

Create Cloud Instance

Sub-technique / Enterprise ATT&CK

Official MITRE entry

An adversary may create a new instance or virtual machine (VM) within the compute service of a cloud account to evade defenses. Creating a new instance may allow an adversary to bypass firewall rules and permissions that exist on instances currently residing within an account. An adversary may Create Snapshot of one or more volumes in an account, create a new instance, mount the snapshots, and then apply a less restrictive security policy to collect Data from Local System or for Remote Data Staging.(Citation: Mandiant M-Trends 2020)

Creating a new instance may also allow an adversary to carry out malicious activity within an environment without affecting the execution of current running instances.

Source references

Source: MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v20, retrieved 2026-10-31. MITRE ATT&CK is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.