Root Account Activity

Severity: high
Group by: readOnly, recipientAccountId, sourceIPAddress
Entities: aws_account_ids, aws_arns, ip_addresses
Compliance: CIS 3.3
Log types: AWS.CloudTrail
Tags: AWS, Identity & Access Management, DemoThreatHunting, Privilege Escalation:Valid Accounts
Reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_root-user.html
Source: github.com/panther-labs/panther-analysis

Root account activity was detected.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Privilege Escalation	`T1078` Valid Accounts

Rule body yaml

AnalysisType: rule
Filename: aws_root_activity.py
RuleID: "AWS.Root.Activity"
DisplayName: "Root Account Activity"
DedupPeriodMinutes: 60
Enabled: true
LogTypes:
  - AWS.CloudTrail
Tags:
  - AWS
  - Identity & Access Management
  - DemoThreatHunting
  - Privilege Escalation:Valid Accounts
Reports:
  CIS:
    - 3.3
  MITRE ATT&CK:
    - TA0004:T1078
Severity: High
Description: >
  Root account activity was detected.
Runbook: >
  Investigate the usage of the root account. If this root activity was not authorized, immediately change the root credentials and investigate what actions the root account took.
Reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_root-user.html
SummaryAttributes:
  - awsRegion
  - eventName
  - eventSource
  - userAgent
  - p_any_aws_account_ids
  - p_any_aws_arns
  - p_any_ip_addresses
Tests:
  - Name: Root Activity - CreateServiceLinkedRole
    ExpectedResult: false
    Log:
      {
        "eventVersion": "1.05",
        "userIdentity":
          {
            "type": "Root",
            "principalId": "123456789012",
            "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root",
            "accountId": "123456789012",
            "accessKeyId": "1",
            "sessionContext":
              {
                "attributes":
                  {
                    "mfaAuthenticated": "false",
                    "creationDate": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
                  },
              },
          },
        "eventTime": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
        "eventSource": "s3.amazonaws.com",
        "eventName": "CreateServiceLinkedRole",
        "awsRegion": "us-west-2",
        "sourceIPAddress": "111.111.111.111",
        "userAgent": "Mozilla",
        "requestParameters":
          {
            "bucketName": "bucket",
            "versioning": [""],
            "host": ["bucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"],
            "VersioningConfiguration":
              {
                "Status": "Enabled",
                "xmlns": "http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/2006-03-01/",
                "MfaDelete": "Enabled",
              },
          },
        "responseElements": null,
        "additionalEventData":
          {
            "SignatureVersion": "SigV4",
            "CipherSuite": "ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256",
            "AuthenticationMethod": "AuthHeader",
          },
        "requestID": "1",
        "eventID": "1",
        "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
        "recipientAccountId": "123456789012",
      }
  - Name: Root Activity
    ExpectedResult: true
    Log:
      {
        "eventVersion": "1.05",
        "userIdentity":
          {
            "type": "Root",
            "principalId": "123456789012",
            "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root",
            "accountId": "123456789012",
            "accessKeyId": "1",
            "sessionContext":
              {
                "attributes":
                  {
                    "mfaAuthenticated": "false",
                    "creationDate": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
                  },
              },
          },
        "eventTime": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
        "eventSource": "s3.amazonaws.com",
        "eventName": "PutBucketVersioning",
        "awsRegion": "us-west-2",
        "sourceIPAddress": "111.111.111.111",
        "userAgent": "Mozilla",
        "requestParameters":
          {
            "bucketName": "bucket",
            "versioning": [""],
            "host": ["bucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"],
            "VersioningConfiguration":
              {
                "Status": "Enabled",
                "xmlns": "http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/2006-03-01/",
                "MfaDelete": "Enabled",
              },
          },
        "responseElements": null,
        "additionalEventData":
          {
            "SignatureVersion": "SigV4",
            "CipherSuite": "ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256",
            "AuthenticationMethod": "AuthHeader",
          },
        "requestID": "1",
        "eventID": "1",
        "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
        "recipientAccountId": "123456789012",
      }
  - Name: IAMUser Activity
    ExpectedResult: false
    Log:
      {
        "eventVersion": "1.05",
        "userIdentity":
          {
            "type": "IAMUser",
            "principalId": "1111",
            "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/tester",
            "accountId": "123456789012",
            "accessKeyId": "1",
            "userName": "tester",
            "sessionContext":
              {
                "attributes":
                  {
                    "mfaAuthenticated": "false",
                    "creationDate": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
                  },
              },
            "invokedBy": "signin.amazonaws.com",
          },
        "eventTime": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
        "eventSource": "s3.amazonaws.com",
        "eventName": "GetBucketAcl",
        "awsRegion": "us-west-2",
        "sourceIPAddress": "111.111.111.111",
        "userAgent": "signin.amazonaws.com",
        "requestParameters":
          {
            "host": ["bucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"],
            "bucketName": "bucket",
            "acl": [""],
          },
        "responseElements": null,
        "additionalEventData":
          {
            "SignatureVersion": "SigV4",
            "CipherSuite": "ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA",
            "AuthenticationMethod": "AuthHeader",
            "vpcEndpointId": "vpce-1",
          },
        "requestID": "1",
        "eventID": "1",
        "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
        "recipientAccountId": "123456789012",
        "vpcEndpointId": "vpce-1",
      }
  - Name: Root User Failed Activity
    ExpectedResult: false
    Log:
      {
        "awsRegion": "redacted",
        "errorMessage": "Not a valid response for the provided request id: aws_ccV60redacted",
        "eventID": "redacted",
        "eventName": "ExternalIdPDirectoryLogin",
        "eventSource": "signin.amazonaws.com",
        "eventTime": "redacted",
        "eventType": "AwsConsoleSignIn",
        "eventVersion": "1.05",
        "p_alert_creation_time": "redacted",
        "p_alert_id": "redacted",
        "p_alert_update_time": "redacted",
        "p_any_aws_account_ids": ["redacted"],
        "p_any_aws_arns": [],
        "p_any_ip_addresses": ["redacted"],
        "p_event_time": "redacted",
        "p_log_type": "AWS.CloudTrail",
        "p_parse_time": "redacted",
        "p_row_id": "redacted",
        "p_rule_error": null,
        "p_rule_id": "AWS.Root.Activity",
        "p_rule_reports": { "CIS": ["3.3"] },
        "p_rule_tags": ["AWS", "Identity & Access Management"],
        "p_source_id": "redacted",
        "p_source_label": "CloudTrail",
        "readOnly": false,
        "recipientAccountId": "redacted",
        "requestID": "redacted",
        "responseElements": { "ExternalIdPDirectoryLogin": "Failure" },
        "sourceIPAddress": "redacted",
        "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.105 Safari/537.36",
        "userIdentity":
          {
            "accessKeyId": "",
            "accountId": "redacted",
            "arn": "",
            "principalId": "redacted",
            "type": "Root",
          },
      }
  - Name: Successful Root Login
    ExpectedResult: true
    Log:
      {
        "eventVersion": "1.05",
        "userIdentity":
          {
            "type": "Root",
            "principalId": "1111",
            "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root",
            "accountId": "123456789012",
            "userName": "root",
          },
        "eventTime": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
        "eventSource": "signin.amazonaws.com",
        "eventName": "ConsoleLogin",
        "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
        "sourceIPAddress": "111.111.111.111",
        "userAgent": "Mozilla",
        "requestParameters": null,
        "responseElements": { "ConsoleLogin": "Success" },
        "additionalEventData":
          {
            "LoginTo": "https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/",
            "MobileVersion": "No",
            "MFAUsed": "No",
          },
        "eventID": "1",
        "eventType": "AwsConsoleSignIn",
        "recipientAccountId": "123456789012",
      }

Detection logic

Condition

userIdentity.type eq "Root"
not (errorCode is_not_null or errorMessage is_not_null)
userIdentity.invokedBy is_null
eventType ne "AwsServiceEvent"
eventName not in "CreateServiceLinkedRole"

Exclusions

Top-level NOT(...) conjuncts: predicates this rule actively suppresses.

Field	Kind	Excluded values
`errorCode`	is_not_null	(no value, null check)
`errorMessage`	is_not_null	(no value, null check)
`eventName`	eq	`CreateServiceLinkedRole`

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.

Field	Kind	Values
`eventType`	ne	`AwsServiceEvent`
`userIdentity.invokedBy`	is_null	(no value, null check)
`userIdentity.type`	eq	`Root`

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
`sourceIPAddress`
`userIdentityAccountId`	`userIdentity.accountId`
`userIdentityArn`	`userIdentity.arn`
`eventTime`
`mfaUsed`	`additionalEventData.MFAUsed`
`eventName`
`recipientAccountId`

`j` / `k`	Scroll down / up
`d` / `u`	Half-page down / up
`gg` / `G`	Top / bottom
`h` / `l`	History back / forward
`f`	Follow link (`Shift` = new tab)
`/`	Focus search
`?`	Toggle this help
`↑` / `↓`	Navigate search results
`Enter`	Open highlighted result
`Esc`	Close results / dialog

`type:`	`events` / `rules` / `providers`
`vendor:`	`sigma` / `elastic` / `splunk` / `kusto` / `chronicle` (vendor name alone also works: `sigma:`, `kql:`, `secops:`…)
`tactic:`	TA-id, slug, or name: `credential_access`, `TA0006`
`technique:`	technique or sub-technique ID: `T1003`, `T1003.001` (alias `tech:`)
`severity:`	`critical` / `high` / `medium` / `low` / `informational` (alias `sev:`)
`risk_score`	Numeric comparison on the Elastic risk score (0 to 100): `risk_score>50`, `risk_score<=20`, `risk_score=99` (alias `risk`; Elastic rules only)
`stages:`	Rules with exactly N pipeline stages
`correlation:`	`single_event` / `sequence` / `alternatives` / `alternatives_cross_log` / `all_required` / `correlated`
`with:`	Co-occurrence event-id; stacks (`with:4624 with:4769`) to require all, while a comma list in one occurrence (`with:4624,4769`) is an either-or group. Implies multi-event
`like:`	Structural neighbors of a rule slug (equivalents + subsumption stricter / broader): `like:comsvcs_lsass_memory_dump-splunk-sysmon`
`groupby:`	Entity-grouping substring match against `group_by_keys`: `groupby:user`, `groupby:host`
`uses:`	Rules whose predicate tree touches the field (any kind, any value): `uses:CommandLine`
`excludes:`	Rules with top-level `not()` clauses on the field (FP whitelists): `excludes:ParentImage`
`field:` / `value:`	Predicate search; narrows rule cards to those with a matching leaf and drives the indicator tier. Unquoted = substring, wildcards allowed (`value:mimikatz`)
`indicator:`	Shorthand for `field:F value:V`: `indicator:Image=*\powershell.exe`
`kind:`	Filter by predicate kind. Narrows rule cards to those carrying a matching predicate leaf (`vendor:elastic kind:cidr_match`) and drives the indicator tier: `contains` / `starts_with` / `ends_with` / `regex` / `cidr` / `eq` / `in` … (operator aliases `op:`/`match:`)
`has:` / `no:`	`sample`, `field`, `notes`, `refs`, `trace`, `thirdparty`, `rule`, `pattern`, `timewindow`, `threshold`, `newterms`, `sigma`/`elastic`/`splunk`/`kusto`/`chronicle`
`-op:val`	Exclude matches; works on most operators but not `type:`/`like:`/`has:`/`no:` (use `no:<flag>` to exclude a rule flag): `tactic:execution -vendor:splunk`. Standalone `-kind:`/`-field:`/`-value:` drop every rule carrying a matching predicate leaf (`type:rules -kind:is_null`)
`field:"…"` / `value:"…"`	Quoted value = anchored exact match (also allows spaces): `value:"net user"`
`a,b`	Comma = OR inside one operator (`vendor:sigma,elastic`, `severity:high,critical`); repeating a facet merges the same way. `field:`/`value:` never split (literal commas)
`vendors:` / `stage:`	Singular and plural spellings fold to the canonical operator and value: `tactics:` = `tactic:`, `type:event` = `type:events`, `correlation:sequences` = `correlation:sequence`, `has:thresholds` = `has:threshold`
`"quoted phrase"`	Exact-match a multi-word phrase (free text)