Suspicious AWS EC2 Instance Role Cloud Infrastructure Discovery

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access → Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1552.005Cloud Instance Metadata API
Discovery
- T1580Cloud Infrastructure Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects an assumed EC2 instance IAM role enumerating EC2 instances and security groups through the DescribeInstances and DescribeSecurityGroups APIs. In the Wiz Kubernetes privilege escalation case study an attacker who reached the Instance Metadata Service from a compromised EKS pod used the stolen instance role to perform cloud infrastructure reconnaissance. This is important because such discovery from a workload role that normally does not enumerate infrastructure is an early sign of a stolen credential being abused for lateral movement.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1552.005 — drag to rearrange

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Possible Kubernetes Service Account Token Theft from Pod Secrets Path

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Suspicious AWS EC2 Instance Role Cloud Infrastructure Discovery

Pivot detection · T1552.005 · 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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