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Scenario S-002 - Unauthorized administrative access to infrastructure

ElementDescription
Scenario IDS-002
Target assetProxmox Host and Teleport Bastion administrative interfaces
Threat sourceExternal attacker or malicious insider
Attack vectorExposed administrative interface or compromise of privileged credentials
Potential impactFull administrative control of the virtualized infrastructure including virtual machines, containers, and network configuration
Likelihood🟨 Medium - administrative interfaces are frequent targets for attackers when exposed or weakly protected
Impact rating🟥 High - compromise of infrastructure management systems grants control over hosted services and critical components
Risk rating🟥 High

Mitigation:

  • Restrict access to administrative interfaces through VPN or bastion host.
  • Enforce multi-factor authentication for privileged accounts.
  • Disable direct root login and use role-based access control.
  • Apply network segmentation to isolate infrastructure management interfaces.
  • Monitor authentication attempts and administrative actions via central logging platform.

Owners:

  • Ops - infrastructure provisioning, access restrictions, system maintenance.
  • Sec - privileged access policies, monitoring, detection rules.

References:

  • ISO 27001 - Control 8.2 Privileged access rights.
  • ISO 27001 - Control 8.3 Information access restriction.
  • ISO 27001 - Control 8.15 Logging
  • ISO 27001 - Control 8.16 Monitoring activities.
  • NIST CSF - PR.AC Identity Management and Access Control.
  • NIST CSF - DE.CM Continuous Monitoring.
  • NIST CSF - RS.AN Incident Analysis.
  • EBIOS RM - Threat scenarios involving compromise or misuse of privileged access.

Response actions:

  • Containment - Immediately disable compromised accounts and restrict access to the management interfaces.
  • Eradication - Reset privileged credentials and review authentication logs to identify the intrusion vector.
  • Recovery - Restore affected systems to a trusted configuration and verify integrity of hosted workloads.
  • Post-incident - Review access control policies, strengthen authentication mechanisms, and update monitoring rules.