When an attacker compromises a machine, they typically have a goal in mind. Some attackers are looking for information residing on the victim’s machine or are looking for access to other machines on the victim’s network. Other times, attackers have plans to use the processing power of the machine itself or even use the machine as a launch point for other attacks. While on Linux virtual machines (VM) in Microsoft Azure we most commonly see attackers installing and running cryptocurrency mining software. This blog post will focus on the latter when an attacker wants to use the compromised machine as a launch point for other attacks.
Azure Security Center (ASC) utilizes an agent that runs on multiple distributions of Linux. When auditd is enabled, it collects logs including process creation events. These are run through the detection pipeline to look for malicious and suspicious activity. Alerts are surfaced through the ASC portal.
Learn more about it in the Azure blog.