MediumElastic detection rules Austin Songer +1

AWS RDS DB Instance Restored

Description

Identifies the restoration of an AWS RDS database instance from a snapshot or S3 backup. Adversaries with access to valid credentials may restore copies of existing databases to bypass logging and monitoring controls or to exfiltrate sensitive data from a duplicated environment. This rule detects successful restoration operations using "RestoreDBInstanceFromDBSnapshot" or "RestoreDBInstanceFromS3", which may indicate unauthorized data access or post-compromise defense evasion.

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: ESXi IaaS Linux macOS Windows
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

Restoring an RDS DB instance may be performed legitimately during troubleshooting, development refresh processes, migrations, or disaster-recovery drills. Validate the user identity, source IP, automation context, and whether the restoration aligns with a known maintenance or testing workflow before treating the event as suspicious. Expected behavior can be exempted through rule exceptions.

References

Links the source published beside this detection. Reference is the link the source wrote, unmodified. Class is decided by this catalogue from the host and path, not stated by the source. Cited by counts published detections citing the same resource, including this one, and the sources beneath it count the repositories this catalogue ingests, which is not the same as independent research.
Reference	Class	Cited by
cloud.hacktricks.xyz/pentesting-cloud/aws-security/aws-post-exploitation/aws-rds-post-exploitation#rds-createdbsnapshot-rds-restoredbinstancefromdbsnapshot-rds-modifydbinstance	Unclassified	2
docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/APIReference/API_RestoreDBInstanceFromDBSnapshot.html	Product documentation	Only this detection cites it
docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/APIReference/API_RestoreDBInstanceFromS3.html	Product documentation	Only this detection cites it
github.com/RhinoSecurityLabs/pacu/blob/master/pacu/modules/rds__explore_snapshots/main.py	Tool	Only this detection cites it

Detection rules

AWS RDS DB Instance Restored

Description

Detection logic

Detection requirements

Known benign triggers

MITRE ATT&CK mappings

References

From the source

Licence

Authorship

Detection rules