MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise
T1535

Unused/Unsupported Cloud Regions

Description

Adversaries may create cloud instances in unused geographic service regions in order to evade detection. Access is usually obtained through compromising accounts used to manage cloud infrastructure. Cloud service providers often provide infrastructure throughout the world in order to improve performance, provide redundancy, and allow customers to meet compliance requirements. Oftentimes, a customer will only use a subset of the available regions and may not actively monitor other regions. If an adversary creates resources in an unused region, they may be able to operate undetected. A variation on this behavior takes advantage of differences in functionality across cloud regions. An adversary could utilize regions which do not support advanced detection services in order to avoid detection of their activity. An example of adversary use of unused AWS regions is to mine cryptocurrency through [Resource Hijacking](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1496), which can cost organizations substantial amounts of money over time depending on the processing power used.(Citation: CloudSploit - Unused AWS Regions)

Mapped SPARTA techniques

No techniques mapped to this control.

Cite as SafeMode Space, mitre-attack-enterprise T1535.

Built 2026-07-25 from 216 techniques, 334 regulation articles, 125 ENISA controls, 2,610 framework controls, and 90 countermeasures.