Suspicious AWS Federated Console Login From Programmatic Credentials

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Priv Esc
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Defense Evasion
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
- T1550.001Application Access Token
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1550.001Application Access Token
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects an AWS Management Console sign-in performed by a federated user identity which indicates a session created from long-term or temporary programmatic credentials rather than an IAM user or SSO login. Wiz shows attackers exchange stolen keys for a federated console session to obfuscate their real identity and break session traceability. This matters because it lets an adversary operate interactively in the console while evading the account owner attribution normally provided by ConsoleLogin.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1078.004 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious Business Email Compromise OAuth Application Sign-In via Entra ID Service Principal (via azure)

Suspicious AWS Federated Console Login From Programmatic Credentials

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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