Malicious EKS Access Policy Association Granting Cluster Admin

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
- T1098Account Manipulation
Priv Esc
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
- T1098Account Manipulation
Defense Evasion
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects CloudTrail AssociateAccessPolicy events that attach the AmazonEKSClusterAdminPolicy or AmazonEKSAdminPolicy to an EKS access entry. Wiz Research showed this new access management API can be abused to grant an attacker principal cluster administrator rights, so unexpected admin grants should be treated as potential privilege escalation.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious Modification of a Computer Account SPN (via security)

Suspicious Massive Group Membership Changes (via security)

Malicious High Risk Active Directory Group Membership Change (via security)

Malicious Account Marked as Sensitive and Cannot Be Delegated Had Its Protection Removed (via security)

Malicious Host Constrained Delegation Settings Changed for Potential Abuse (Rubeus) - Kerberos Only (via security)

Malicious Host Set with Unconstrained Delegation (via security)

Malicious EKS Access Policy Association Granting Cluster Admin

Pivot detection · T1098 · 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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