Detection rules › Splunk
ASL AWS IAM Delete Policy
The following analytic identifies when a policy is deleted in AWS. It leverages Amazon Security Lake logs to detect the DeletePolicy API operation. Monitoring policy deletions is crucial as it can indicate unauthorized attempts to weaken security controls. If confirmed malicious, this activity could allow an attacker to remove critical security policies, potentially leading to privilege escalation or unauthorized access to sensitive resources.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Persistence | T1098 Account Manipulation |
| Privilege Escalation | T1098 Account Manipulation |
Rules detecting the same action
Other rules on this platform that filter on the same API call or operation.
- AWS IAM Delete Policy (Splunk)
- IAM Policy Modified (Panther)
Rule body splunk
name: ASL AWS IAM Delete Policy
id: 609ced68-d420-4ff7-8164-ae98b4b4018c
version: 9
creation_date: '2021-04-06'
modification_date: '2026-05-13'
author: Patrick Bareiss, Splunk
status: production
type: Hunting
description: The following analytic identifies when a policy is deleted in AWS. It leverages Amazon Security Lake logs to detect the DeletePolicy API operation. Monitoring policy deletions is crucial as it can indicate unauthorized attempts to weaken security controls. If confirmed malicious, this activity could allow an attacker to remove critical security policies, potentially leading to privilege escalation or unauthorized access to sensitive resources.
data_source:
- ASL AWS CloudTrail
search: |-
`amazon_security_lake` api.operation=DeletePolicy
| fillnull
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime
BY actor.user.uid api.operation api.service.name
http_request.user_agent src_endpoint.ip actor.user.account.uid
cloud.provider cloud.region
| rename actor.user.uid as user api.operation as action api.service.name as dest http_request.user_agent as user_agent src_endpoint.ip as src actor.user.account.uid as vendor_account cloud.provider as vendor_product cloud.region as vendor_region
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `asl_aws_iam_delete_policy_filter`
how_to_implement: The detection is based on Amazon Security Lake events from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is a centralized data lake that provides security-related data from AWS services. To use this detection, you must ingest CloudTrail logs from Amazon Security Lake into Splunk. To run this search, ensure that you ingest events using the latest version of Splunk Add-on for Amazon Web Services (https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/1876) or the Federated Analytics App.
known_false_positives: This detection will require tuning to provide high fidelity detection capabilties. Tune based on src addresses (corporate offices, VPN terminations) or by groups of users. Not every user with AWS access should have permission to delete policies (least privilege). In addition, this may be saved seperately and tuned for failed or success attempts only.
references:
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/APIReference/API_DeletePolicy.html
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/delete-policy.html
analytic_story:
- AWS IAM Privilege Escalation
asset_type: AWS Account
mitre_attack_id:
- T1098
product:
- Splunk Enterprise
- Splunk Enterprise Security
- Splunk Cloud
category: cloud
security_domain: access
tests:
- name: True Positive Test
attack_data:
- data: https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/splunk/attack_data/master/datasets/attack_techniques/T1098/aws_iam_delete_policy/asl_ocsf_cloudtrail.json
sourcetype: aws:asl
source: aws_asl
test_type: unit
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: search
`amazon_security_lake` api.operation=DeletePolicy
Stage 2: fillnull
| fillnull
Stage 3: stats
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime
BY actor.user.uid api.operation api.service.name
http_request.user_agent src_endpoint.ip actor.user.account.uid
cloud.provider cloud.region
Stage 4: rename
| rename actor.user.uid as user api.operation as action api.service.name as dest http_request.user_agent as user_agent src_endpoint.ip as src actor.user.account.uid as vendor_account cloud.provider as vendor_product cloud.region as vendor_region
Stage 5: search
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
Stage 6: search
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
Stage 7: search
| `asl_aws_iam_delete_policy_filter`
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 |
|---|---|---|
api.operation | eq |
|
sourcetype | eq |
|