Malicious AWS IAM User Creation With Known Threat Actor Names

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Priv Esc
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Defense Evasion
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of IAM users with the persistence names ses_xcatze or AdminsDDefault which Wiz attributes to cloud-fluent threat actors establishing backdoor privileged identities. This is important because these are attacker-chosen usernames disguised to blend in with legitimate accounts and their creation indicates an adversary is building durable access into the AWS account.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1078.004 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious AWS IAM User Creation With Known Threat Actor Names

Pivot detection · T1078.004 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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