Suspicious SES Email Identity and Receipt Rule Abuse (via cloudtrail)

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
aws
Service
cloudtrail
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-18
Updated
2026-10-18

ATT&CK techniques

Resource Dev
  1. Recon

  2. Initial Access

  3. Execution

  4. Persistence

  5. Priv Esc

  6. Defense Evasion

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of SES email identities and receipt rules, which JavaGhost abuses to weaponize a victim AWS account for outbound phishing and inbound mail capture. Standing up sending identities and receipt rules turns the compromised account into attacker-controlled email infrastructure.

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.