Many Recon Events

Status: test
Severity: high
Time window: 1m
Log source: product aws, service cloudtrail
Author: Zach Mathis (@yamatosecurity)
Source: github.com/Yamato-Security/suzaku-rules

Detects multiple reconnaissance events, which may indicate an attacker attempting to gather information about the target environment. For each user ARN, it will look for three or more different reconnaissance events within a one minute timespan. If you are getting too many false positives, you can lower the timespan or increase the number of events required to trigger an alert.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Reconnaissance	No specific technique

Event coverage

Provider	Event
AWS-iam	ListAccessKeys
AWS-iam	ListGroups
AWS-iam	ListRoles
AWS-iam	ListUsers
AWS-iam	GetAccountAuthorizationDetails
AWS-iam	GetCredentialReport
AWS-iam	GetPolicy
AWS-iam	GetPolicyVersion
AWS-iam	GetRole
AWS-iam	GetRolePolicy
AWS-iam	GetUser
AWS-iam	GetUserPolicy
AWS-iam	ListAttachedRolePolicies
AWS-iam	ListAttachedUserPolicies
AWS-iam	ListUserPolicies

Rules detecting the same action

Other rules on this platform that filter on the same API call or operation.

AWS Discovery API Calls from VPN ASN for the First Time by Identity (Elastic)
AWS IAM Group Read Only Events (Panther)
Role Enumeration (Sigma)
User Enumeration (Sigma)

Rule body yaml


title: Many Recon Events
id: 08d8b077-cc1c-4b74-8e9c-e07f84b203f0
status: test
description: |
    Detects multiple reconnaissance events, which may indicate an attacker attempting to gather information about the target environment.
    For each user ARN, it will look for three or more different reconnaissance events within a one minute timespan.
    If you are getting too many false positives, you can lower the timespan or increase the number of events required to trigger an alert.
references:
author: Zach Mathis (@yamatosecurity)
date: 2025-08-02
modified: 2025-08-02
tags:
    - attack.reconnaissance
logsource:
    product: aws
    service: cloudtrail
correlation:
    type: value_count
    rules:
        - Recon Event
    group-by:
        - userIdentity.arn
    timespan: 1m
    condition:
        gte: 3
        field: eventName
    generate: false
level: high
---
title: Recon Event
id: 33ecb0d0-389f-4954-ae8e-7b62f9e369b8
status: test
description: Detects reconnaissance activity.
references:
author: Zach Mathis (@yamatosecurity)
date: 2025-08-02
modified: 2025-08-02
tags:
    - attack.reconnaissance
logsource:
    product: aws
    service: cloudtrail
detection:
    selection:
        eventSource: 'iam.amazonaws.com'
    selection_recon:
          eventName:
            - ListUsers
            - ListRoles
            - ListGroups
            - ListAttachedRolePolicies
            - ListAttachedUserPolicies
            - ListUserPolicies
            - ListAccessKeys
            - GetCredentialReport
            - GetAccountAuthorizationDetails
            - GetCallerIdentity
            - GetPolicy
            - GetPolicyVersion
            - GetRole
            - GetRolePolicy
            - GetUser
            - GetUserPolicy
            - DescribeRegions
            - DescribeAvailabilityZones
            - DescribeVpcs
            - DescribeSubnets
            - DescribeSecurityGroups
            - DescribeInstances
            - DescribeVolumes
            - DescribeImages
            - DescribeNetworkInterfaces
            - ListServiceQuotas
            - ListServices
            - ListBuckets
            - GetBucketAcl
            - GetBucketPolicy
            - ListTables
            - DescribeTable
            - ListRepositories
            - DescribeRepositories
            - GetSessionToken
            - LookupEvents
            - DescribeTrails
            - GetTrailStatus
            - ListTrails
            - ListFunctions
            - ListTopics   
            - ListQueues   
            - ListClusters 
            - DescribeCluster
    condition: all of selection*
level: low

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

all of selection*

Stage 1: `selection`

selection:
    eventSource: 'iam.amazonaws.com'

Stage 2: `selection_recon`

selection_recon:
      eventName:
        - ListUsers
        - ListRoles
        - ListGroups
        - ListAttachedRolePolicies
        - ListAttachedUserPolicies
        - ListUserPolicies
        - ListAccessKeys
        - GetCredentialReport
        - GetAccountAuthorizationDetails
        - GetCallerIdentity
        - GetPolicy
        - GetPolicyVersion
        - GetRole
        - GetRolePolicy
        - GetUser
        - GetUserPolicy
        - DescribeRegions
        - DescribeAvailabilityZones
        - DescribeVpcs
        - DescribeSubnets
        - DescribeSecurityGroups
        - DescribeInstances
        - DescribeVolumes
        - DescribeImages
        - DescribeNetworkInterfaces
        - ListServiceQuotas
        - ListServices
        - ListBuckets
        - GetBucketAcl
        - GetBucketPolicy
        - ListTables
        - DescribeTable
        - ListRepositories
        - DescribeRepositories
        - GetSessionToken
        - LookupEvents
        - DescribeTrails
        - GetTrailStatus
        - ListTrails
        - ListFunctions
        - ListTopics
        - ListQueues
        - ListClusters
        - DescribeCluster

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
`eventName`	eq	`DescribeAvailabilityZones` `DescribeCluster` `DescribeImages` `DescribeInstances` `DescribeNetworkInterfaces` `DescribeRegions` `DescribeRepositories` `DescribeSecurityGroups` `DescribeSubnets` `DescribeTable` `DescribeTrails` `DescribeVolumes` `DescribeVpcs` `GetAccountAuthorizationDetails` `GetBucketAcl` `GetBucketPolicy` `GetCallerIdentity` `GetCredentialReport` `GetPolicy` `GetPolicyVersion` `GetRole` `GetRolePolicy` `GetSessionToken` `GetTrailStatus` `GetUser` `GetUserPolicy` `ListAccessKeys` `ListAttachedRolePolicies` `ListAttachedUserPolicies` `ListBuckets` `ListClusters` `ListFunctions` `ListGroups` `ListQueues` `ListRepositories` `ListRoles` `ListServiceQuotas` `ListServices` `ListTables` `ListTopics` `ListTrails` `ListUserPolicies` `ListUsers` `LookupEvents`
`eventSource`	eq	`iam.amazonaws.com`

`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)

Many Recon Events

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Event coverage

Rules detecting the same action

Rule body yaml

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

Stage 1: `selection`

Stage 2: `selection_recon`

Indicators

Keyboard shortcuts

Search operators

Many Recon Events

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Event coverage

Rules detecting the same action

Rule body yaml

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: condition

Stage 1: selection

Stage 2: selection_recon

Indicators

Stage 0: `condition`

Stage 1: `selection`

Stage 2: `selection_recon`