Suspicious AWS Inline Policy Granting Full S3 Access

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1098.001Additional Cloud Credentials
Priv Esc
- T1098.001Additional Cloud Credentials
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a PutUserPolicy call that attaches an inline IAM policy granting s3 wildcard permissions to a user. It maps to privilege escalation observed in S3 attack chains where an operator self-grants full bucket access before collection. Detecting it exposes IAM policy tampering aimed at cloud data theft.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098.001 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious IAM Access Key Creation for Persistence (via cloudtrail)

Suspicious AWS Administrator Policy Attachment via CloudTrail (via aws)

Suspicious GCP Service Account Key Creation for Persistence (via gcp.audit)

Malicious Credential Added to an Azure AD Application (via auditlogs)

Suspicious AWS Long-Term Access Key Creation for Persistence via CloudTrail (via aws)

Suspicious Credential Added to Existing Application for OAuth Persistence in Entra ID (via azure auditlogs)

Suspicious IAM Policy Attachment Granting AdministratorAccess

Suspicious Credential Added to Application or Service Principal in Entra ID (via azure)

Okta System Log: New Identity Provider Created via system.idp.lifecycle.create

Suspicious AWS Inline Policy Granting Full S3 Access

Pivot detection · T1098.001 · 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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