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AWS EC2 NACL Entry Created or Replaced Allowing All Traffic by New Identity

Detects a principal account creating or replacing - or attempts to create or replace - an AWS Network Access Control List (NACL) entry using protocol -1 (all traffic). Both successful and failed outcomes are…

Description

Detects a principal account creating or replacing - or attempts to create or replace - an AWS Network Access Control List (NACL) entry using protocol -1 (all traffic). Both successful and failed outcomes are included. A NACL entry with protocol -1 passes all traffic regardless of port, which would disable network-layer controls for the affected subnets. Monitoring for new identities performing this change helps surface freshly compromised credentials or unauthorized principals removing a defense-in-depth layer to facilitate lateral movement or data exfiltration. This signal only flags if this behavior was not observed historically in a specific time window.

Detection logic

Its licence does not clear it for publishing here

Sunturai publishes a detection's own text where the licence it arrived under has been reviewed and permits it, and Elastic License 2.0 has not. The query as its source wrote it, its canonical form and the hash that pins this revision are in the workspace record.

Detection requirements

Platform
ContainersESXiIaaSIdentity ProviderLinuxmacOSNetwork DevicesOffice SuiteWindows

The rule states no platform. This is derived from the 2 ATT&CK techniques it maps to.

Log source category
event_index

Known benign triggers

  • Some legitimate architectures use permissive NACLs as a passthrough layer while relying on security groups for access control. Validate that the modified NACL is associated with subnets where this design pattern is expected and that the change was authorized through a change management process.

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