Suspicious AWS STS Session Token and Role Chaining Abuse via CloudTrail (via aws)

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 surfaces AWS STS GetSessionToken and AssumeRole activity that adversaries abuse to mint temporary credentials and chain roles for lateral movement, as detailed in Red Canary's analysis of AWS cloud account abuse. Because these APIs are also used legitimately, alerts should be correlated with the calling identity and source to spot role chaining that escalates access across the environment.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious AWS STS Session Token and Role Chaining Abuse via CloudTrail (via aws)

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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