Detection rules › Kusto
AWSCloudTrail - Created CRUD S3 policy and then privilege escalation
Identifies creation of IAM policies that grant broad Amazon S3 CRUD permissions, followed by policy attachment activity to users, roles, or groups. This sequence can indicate attempts to expand access and should be investigated as potential cloud privilege escalation.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Persistence | T1098.003 Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Roles |
| Privilege Escalation | T1098.003 Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Roles, T1484 Domain or Tenant Policy Modification |
Rules detecting the same action
Other rules on this platform that filter on the same API call or operation.
- ASL AWS Create Policy Version to allow all resources (Splunk)
- AWS IAM CompromisedKeyQuarantine Policy Attached to User (Elastic)
- AWS Lateral Movement from Kubernetes SA via AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity (Elastic)
- AWSCloudTrail - CloudFormation policy created then used for privilege escalation (Kusto)
- AWSCloudTrail - Creation of CRUD DynamoDB policy and then privilege escalation (Kusto)
- AWSCloudTrail - Creation of CRUD KMS policy and then privilege escalation (Kusto)
- AWSCloudTrail - Creation of CRUD Lambda policy and then privilege escalation (Kusto)
- AWSCloudTrail - Creation of DataPipeline policy and then privilege escalation (Kusto)
Rule body kusto
id: 467cbe7e-e6d4-4f4e-8e44-84dd01932c32
name: AWSCloudTrail - Created CRUD S3 policy and then privilege escalation
description: |
Identifies creation of IAM policies that grant broad Amazon S3 CRUD permissions, followed by policy attachment activity to users, roles, or groups. This sequence can indicate attempts to
expand access and should be investigated as potential cloud privilege escalation.
severity: Medium
status: Available
requiredDataConnectors:
- connectorId: AWS
dataTypes:
- AWSCloudTrail
queryFrequency: 1d
queryPeriod: 1d
triggerOperator: gt
triggerThreshold: 0
tactics:
- DefenseEvasion
- PrivilegeEscalation
- Persistence
relevantTechniques:
- T1484
- T1098.003
query: |
let EventNameList = dynamic(["AttachUserPolicy","AttachRolePolicy","AttachGroupPolicy"]);
let createPolicy = dynamic(["CreatePolicy", "CreatePolicyVersion"]);
let timeframe = 1d;
let lookback = 14d;
// Creating Master table with all the events to use with materialize for better performance
let EventInfo = AWSCloudTrail
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(lookback)
| where EventName in (EventNameList) or EventName in (createPolicy)
| extend UserIdentityArn = iif(isempty(UserIdentityArn), tostring(parse_json(Resources)[0].ARN), UserIdentityArn)
| extend UserName = tostring(split(UserIdentityArn, '/')[-1])
| extend AccountName = case( UserIdentityPrincipalid == "Anonymous", "Anonymous", isempty(UserIdentityUserName), UserName, UserIdentityUserName)
| extend AccountName = iif(AccountName contains "@", tostring(split(AccountName, '@', 0)[0]), AccountName),
AccountUPNSuffix = iif(AccountName contains "@", tostring(split(AccountName, '@', 1)[0]), "");
//Checking for Policy creation event with Full Admin Privileges since lookback period.
let FullAdminPolicyEvents = materialize( EventInfo
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(lookback)
| where EventName in (createPolicy)
| extend PolicyName = tostring(parse_json(RequestParameters).policyName)
| extend Statement = parse_json(tostring((parse_json(RequestParameters).policyDocument))).Statement
| mvexpand Statement
| extend Action = parse_json(Statement).Action , Effect = tostring(parse_json(Statement).Effect), Resource = tostring(parse_json(Statement).Resource), Condition = tostring(parse_json(Statement).Condition)
| extend Action = tostring(Action)
| where Effect =~ "Allow" and (Action contains "s3:Create" and Action contains "s3:Get" and Action contains "s3:Put" and Action contains "s3:Delete") and Resource == "*" and Condition == ""
| distinct TimeGenerated, EventName, PolicyName, SourceIpAddress, UserIdentityArn, RecipientAccountId, AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix
| project-rename StartTime = TimeGenerated );
let PolicyAttach = materialize( EventInfo
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(timeframe)
| where EventName in (EventNameList) and isempty(ErrorCode) and isempty(ErrorMessage)
| extend PolicyName = tostring(split(tostring(parse_json(RequestParameters).policyArn),"/")[1])
| summarize AttachEventCount=count(), StartTime = min(TimeGenerated), EndTime = max(TimeGenerated) by EventSource, EventName, UserIdentityType , UserIdentityArn, SourceIpAddress, RecipientAccountId, AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix, PolicyName
| extend AttachEvent = pack("StartTime", StartTime, "EndTime", EndTime, "EventName", EventName, "UserIdentityType", UserIdentityType, "SourceIpAddress", SourceIpAddress, "AccountName", AccountName, "AccountUPNSuffix", AccountUPNSuffix, "RecipientAccountId", RecipientAccountId, "UserIdentityArn", UserIdentityArn)
| project EventSource, PolicyName, AttachEvent, AttachEventCount, RecipientAccountId, AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix
);
// Joining the list of PolicyNames and checking if it has been attached to any Roles/Users/Groups.
// These Roles/Users/Groups will be Privileged and can be used by adversaries as pivot point for privilege escalation via multiple ways.
FullAdminPolicyEvents
| join kind=leftouter
(
PolicyAttach
)
on PolicyName
| project-away PolicyName1
entityMappings:
- entityType: Account
fieldMappings:
- identifier: Name
columnName: AccountName
- identifier: UPNSuffix
columnName: AccountUPNSuffix
- identifier: CloudAppAccountId
columnName: RecipientAccountId
- entityType: IP
fieldMappings:
- identifier: Address
columnName: SourceIpAddress
customDetails:
PolicyName: PolicyName
EventName: EventName
RecipientAccountId: RecipientAccountId
UserIdentityArn: UserIdentityArn
alertDetailsOverride:
alertDisplayNameFormat: 'AWS S3 privilege escalation policy activity: {{PolicyName}} by {{AccountName}}'
alertDescriptionFormat: 'Detected {{EventName}} for policy {{PolicyName}} in account {{RecipientAccountId}}.'
version: 1.0.3
kind: Scheduled
Stages and Predicates
Parameters
let EventNameList = dynamic(["AttachUserPolicy","AttachRolePolicy","AttachGroupPolicy"]);
let createPolicy = dynamic(["CreatePolicy", "CreatePolicyVersion"]);
let timeframe = 1d;
let lookback = 14d;
Let binding: PolicyAttach
let PolicyAttach = materialize( EventInfo
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(timeframe)
| where EventName in (EventNameList) and isempty(ErrorCode) and isempty(ErrorMessage)
| extend PolicyName = tostring(split(tostring(parse_json(RequestParameters).policyArn),"/")[1])
| summarize AttachEventCount=count(), StartTime = min(TimeGenerated), EndTime = max(TimeGenerated) by EventSource, EventName, UserIdentityType , UserIdentityArn, SourceIpAddress, RecipientAccountId, AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix, PolicyName
| extend AttachEvent = pack("StartTime", StartTime, "EndTime", EndTime, "EventName", EventName, "UserIdentityType", UserIdentityType, "SourceIpAddress", SourceIpAddress, "AccountName", AccountName, "AccountUPNSuffix", AccountUPNSuffix, "RecipientAccountId", RecipientAccountId, "UserIdentityArn", UserIdentityArn)
| project EventSource, PolicyName, AttachEvent, AttachEventCount, RecipientAccountId, AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix
);
Derived from EventNameList, timeframe, EventInfo.
Stage 1: source
EventInfo
Stage 2: where
where ...
Stage 3: where
where EventName in~ ("CreatePolicy", "CreatePolicyVersion")
Stage 4: extend
extend PolicyName
Stage 5: extend
extend Statement
Stage 6: mv-expand
mv-expand Statement
Stage 7: extend
extend Action, Condition, Effect, Resource
Stage 8: extend
extend Action
Stage 9: where
where Action contains "s3:Create" and Action contains "s3:Delete" and Action contains "s3:Get" and Action contains "s3:Put" and Condition =~ "" and Effect =~ "Allow" and Resource == "*"
Stage 10: distinct
distinct AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix, EventName, PolicyName, RecipientAccountId, SourceIpAddress, TimeGenerated, UserIdentityArn
Stage 11: project-rename
project-rename
Stage 12: join
join kind=leftouter (...)
Stage 13: project-away
project-away PolicyName1
Stage 14: summarize
summarize by EventSource, EventName, UserIdentityType, UserIdentityArn, SourceIpAddress, RecipientAccountId, AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix, PolicyName
Indicators
Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.
Output fields
Fields the rule emits when it matches. Chronicle authors list these in the outcome block; they appear on the detection and $risk_score drives alerting. Sentinel / Defender XDR rules build them up through project / summarize / extend stages. Sentinel maps these into alert fields via entityMappings and customDetails; Defender XDR custom detections surface them as alert fields directly.
| Field | Source |
|---|---|
AccountName | summarize |
AccountUPNSuffix | summarize |
EventName | summarize |
EventSource | summarize |
PolicyName | summarize |
RecipientAccountId | summarize |
SourceIpAddress | summarize |
UserIdentityArn | summarize |
UserIdentityType | summarize |