AWS IAM AdministratorAccess Policy Attached to Group
An adversary with access to a set of compromised credentials may attempt to persist or escalate privileges by attaching additional permissions to user groups the compromised user account belongs to. This rule looks…
Description
An adversary with access to a set of compromised credentials may attempt to persist or escalate privileges by attaching additional permissions to user groups the compromised user account belongs to. This rule looks for use of the IAM AttachGroupPolicy API operation to attach the highly permissive AdministratorAccess AWS managed policy to an existing IAM user group.
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 SuiteSaaSWindows
The rule states no platform. This is derived from the ATT&CK technique it maps to.
- Log source category
- event_index
Known benign triggers
- While this can be normal behavior, it should be investigated to ensure validity. Verify whether the user identity should be using the IAM `AttachGroupPolicy` API operation to attach the `AdministratorAccess` policy to the user group.
MITRE ATT&CK mappings
0 exclusive techniques.This is coverage no other published rule has; it is not this rule's total technique count.
References
| Reference | Cited by |
|---|---|
| docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/APIReference/API_AttachGroupPolicy.html | Only this detection cites it |
| docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-managed-policy/latest/reference/AdministratorAccess.html | 3 |
| hackingthe.cloud/aws/exploitation/iam_privilege_escalation/ | 7 |
From the source
- At source
- Open at source
- Upstream identifier
- df919b5e-a0f6-4fd8-8598-e3ce79299e3b
- Tagged by the source as
- Data Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWSData Source: AWS CloudTrailData Source: AWS IAMDomain: CloudNoise: LowPerformance: NormalPlatform: AWSResources: Investigation GuideRule Type: Event Correlation (EQL)Service: AWS IAMTactic: PersistenceTactic: Privilege EscalationUse Case: Identity and Access Audit
Licence
- Published under
- Elastic License 2.0Read the licence
- Attribution
- Required
Authorship
- Written by
- Published
- Sep 20, 2026
- Version
- 3