Suspicious AWS IoT Credential Issuance via AssumeRoleWithCertificate

PremiumReviewedSigma · Low · v1
Product
aws
Service
cloudtrail
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-11-04
Updated
2026-11-04

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → Lateral Movement
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Discovery

  8. Collection

  9. C2

  10. Exfiltration

  11. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the AWS IoT credentials provider AssumeRoleWithCertificate operation which exchanges an X.509 device certificate for temporary IAM role credentials. Wiz documents this as one of the less common ways to obtain credentials in AWS. This is important because this credential path is rarely used outside dedicated IoT fleets so its appearance can indicate an attacker abusing a stolen device certificate to mint role credentials and gain access.

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Suspicious AWS IoT Credential Issuance via AssumeRoleWithCertificate
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.