Name:ASL AWS Create Access Key id:81a9f2fe-1697-473c-af1d-086b0d8b63c8 version:1 date:2024-12-12 author:Patrick Bareiss, Splunk status:production type:Hunting Description:The following analytic identifies the creation of AWS IAM access keys by a user for another user, which can indicate privilege escalation. It leverages AWS CloudTrail logs to detect instances where the user creating the access key is different from the user for whom the key is created. This activity is significant because unauthorized access key creation can allow attackers to establish persistence or exfiltrate data via AWS APIs. If confirmed malicious, this could lead to unauthorized access to AWS services, data exfiltration, and long-term persistence in the environment. Data_source:
-ASL AWS CloudTrail
search:`amazon_security_lake` api.operation=CreateAccessKey | fillnull | stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by api.operation actor.user.uid actor.user.account.uid http_request.user_agent src_endpoint.ip cloud.region | rename actor.user.uid as user, src_endpoint.ip as src_ip, cloud.region as region, http_request.user_agent as user_agent | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` |`asl_aws_create_access_key_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:While this search has no known false positives, it is possible that an AWS admin has legitimately created keys for another user. References: -https://bishopfox.com/blog/privilege-escalation-in-aws -https://rhinosecuritylabs.com/aws/aws-privilege-escalation-methods-mitigation-part-2/ drilldown_searches:
: tags: analytic_story: - 'AWS IAM Privilege Escalation' asset_type:AWS Account confidence:90 impact:70 message:User $user$ is attempting to create access keys mitre_attack_id: - 'T1136.003' - 'T1136' observable: name:'src_ip' type:'IP Address' - role: - 'Attacker' name:'user' type:'User' - role: - 'Victim' product: - 'Splunk Enterprise' - 'Splunk Enterprise Security' - 'Splunk Cloud' required_fields: - 'api.operation' - 'actor.user.uid' - 'actor.user.account.uid' - 'http_request.user_agent' - 'src_endpoint.ip' - 'src_endpoint.domain' - 'cloud.region' risk_score:63 security_domain:network
