Suspicious SES Account Sending Enablement and Identity Verification via CloudTrail

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Priv Esc
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Defense Evasion
- T1078.004Cloud Accounts
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1580Cloud Infrastructure Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects UpdateAccountSendingEnabled and VerifyEmailIdentity events against Amazon SES. Adversaries who compromise valid AWS credentials verify new sending identities and re-enable account sending so they can abuse SES to distribute spam or phishing from the victim account. Re-enabling sending and verifying new identities together is characteristic of SES abuse rather than normal onboarding.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious SES Account Sending Enablement and Identity Verification via CloudTrail

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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