AWS IAM User Console Login Without MFA

Description

Identifies the first observed occurrence, within the configured New Terms history window, of a regular IAM user successfully signing in to the AWS Management Console without multi-factor authentication. A password alone is a weaker control than password-plus-MFA, and an adversary who has phished, guessed, or otherwise obtained a user's password can sign in directly if MFA is not enforced for that user. This rule is scoped to standard IAM users only; it excludes the AWS root user (covered by a dedicated rule) and federated/SSO sign-ins (covered by a dedicated rule that also accounts for IdP-side MFA), since MFAUsed: No is expected in both of those cases for reasons unrelated to this gap.

Detection logic

Its licence does not clear it for publishing here

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Detection requirements

Platform: Containers ESXi IaaS Identity Provider Linux macOS Network Devices Office Suite SaaS Windows
The rule states no platform. This is derived from the ATT&CK technique it maps to.
Log source category: event_index

Known benign triggers

Environments that do not enforce MFA for all IAM users will see this regularly. This is a New Terms rule, so it only fires once per `user.id` within the configured history window (7d); use it to drive MFA enrollment and enforcement rather than treating every occurrence as an incident, unless MFA is a mandated control in your environment.

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
docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_mfa.html	Product documentation	Only this detection cites it
stratus-red-team.cloud/attack-techniques/AWS/aws.initial-access.console-login-without-mfa/	Unclassified	Only this detection cites it

Detection rules

AWS IAM User Console Login Without MFA

Description

Detection logic

Detection requirements

Known benign triggers

MITRE ATT&CK mappings

References

From the source

Licence

Authorship

Detection rules