Detection rules › Splunk
ASL AWS IAM Successful Group Deletion
The following analytic detects the successful deletion of a group within AWS IAM, leveraging CloudTrail IAM events. This action, while not inherently malicious, can serve as a precursor to more sinister activities, such as unauthorized access or privilege escalation attempts. By monitoring for such deletions, the analytic aids in identifying potential preparatory steps towards an attack, allowing for early detection and mitigation. The identification of this behavior is crucial for a SOC to prevent the potential impact of an attack, which could include unauthorized access to sensitive resources or disruption of AWS environment operations.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Persistence | T1098 Account Manipulation |
| Privilege Escalation | T1098 Account Manipulation |
| Discovery | T1069.003 Permission Groups Discovery: Cloud Groups |
Rules detecting the same action
Other rules on this platform that filter on the same API call or operation.
Rule body splunk
name: ASL AWS IAM Successful Group Deletion
id: 1bbe54f1-93d7-4764-8a01-ddaa12ece7ac
version: 10
creation_date: '2024-05-22'
modification_date: '2026-05-13'
author: Patrick Bareiss, Splunk
status: production
type: Hunting
description: The following analytic detects the successful deletion of a group within AWS IAM, leveraging CloudTrail IAM events. This action, while not inherently malicious, can serve as a precursor to more sinister activities, such as unauthorized access or privilege escalation attempts. By monitoring for such deletions, the analytic aids in identifying potential preparatory steps towards an attack, allowing for early detection and mitigation. The identification of this behavior is crucial for a SOC to prevent the potential impact of an attack, which could include unauthorized access to sensitive resources or disruption of AWS environment operations.
data_source:
- ASL AWS CloudTrail
search: |-
`amazon_security_lake` api.operation=DeleteGroup status=Success
| 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_successful_group_deletion_filter`
how_to_implement: You must install the Data Lake Federated Analytics App and ingest the logs into Splunk.
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 groups (least privilege).
references:
- https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/iam/delete-group.html
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/APIReference/API_DeleteGroup.html
analytic_story:
- AWS IAM Privilege Escalation
asset_type: AWS Account
mitre_attack_id:
- T1069.003
- 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_successful_group_deletion/asl_ocsf_cloudtrail.json
sourcetype: aws:asl
source: aws_asl
test_type: unit
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: search
`amazon_security_lake` api.operation=DeleteGroup status=Success
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_successful_group_deletion_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 |
|
status | eq |
|