AWS EKS Access Entry Granted Cluster Admin Policy

Description

Detects when the AmazonEKSClusterAdminPolicy or AmazonEKSAdminPolicy is associated with a principal via the EKS Access Entries API. This grants full cluster-admin equivalent access to the specified IAM user or role. Unlike the legacy aws-auth ConfigMap which is only visible in Kubernetes audit logs, Access Entries modifications appear in CloudTrail, providing an additional detection surface. Attackers who have obtained IAM permissions to manage EKS access entries can use this API to backdoor cluster access for persistence, mapping attacker-controlled IAM identities to cluster-admin privileges without modifying any Kubernetes resources.

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

Platform or security teams may legitimately associate these policies during cluster onboarding, break-glass admin setup, or controlled RBAC migrations from aws-auth. Validate the caller, change ticket, and target IAM principal.

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/eks/latest/APIReference/API_AssociateAccessPolicy.html	Product documentation	Only this detection cites it
docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/access-entries.html	Product documentation	3

Detection rules

AWS EKS Access Entry Granted Cluster Admin Policy

Description

Detection logic

Detection requirements

Known benign triggers

MITRE ATT&CK mappings

References

From the source

Licence

Authorship

Detection rules