Suspicious AWS IAM Privilege Escalation via AttachUserPolicy of Administrator Policy

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Priv Esc
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects an IAM AttachUserPolicy call that attaches an administrator managed policy to a user, a technique used by operators of exposed IAM keys tracked by Unit 42 to escalate privileges before launching cryptojacking instances. Attackers abuse leaked long-term keys to grant themselves full control of the account which enables large scale resource abuse.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098.003 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Assignment of a Privileged Azure AD Role (via auditlogs)

Suspicious Entra Cross-Tenant Access or External User Invitation via Azure Audit (via azure)

Suspicious Delegated Permission Grant to Entra Agent Access Scope via Azure Audit Logs

Suspicious IAM CreateLoginProfile For Root User via AWS AssumeRoot Abuse

Suspicious Member Added to Privileged Directory Role in Entra ID

Suspicious High-Privilege Microsoft Graph Application Role Grant via Azure Audit (via azure)

GCP Google Workspace: Application ContextAwareAccess Setting Changed

GitHub Audit: Outside Collaborator Membership and Permission Changes

Azure Audit Logs: Admin-initiated App Role Assignments and Privileged Delegated Permissions

Suspicious AWS IAM Privilege Escalation via AttachUserPolicy of Administrator Policy

Pivot detection · T1098.003 · 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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