AWS IAM Permissions Boundary Modified or Removed

Description

Identifies the modification or removal of an IAM permissions boundary on an IAM user or role. A permissions boundary caps the maximum permissions an identity can have, regardless of its attached identity policies. An adversary who can delete a boundary ("DeleteUserPermissionsBoundary", "DeleteRolePermissionsBoundary") or replace it with a more permissive one ("PutUserPermissionsBoundary", "PutRolePermissionsBoundary") can lift that cap and unlock permissions the identity's policies already grant, enabling privilege escalation. Boundary changes are infrequent and usually performed by a small set of administrators or infrastructure-as-code pipelines, so changes by unexpected principals warrant review.

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: 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

Permissions boundaries are managed by identity/platform teams and infrastructure-as-code pipelines as part of normal governance. Verify the principal in `aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.arn`, the targeted user or role, and the boundary policy against approved change records. Known administration roles and deployment automation can be excluded after validation.

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/access_policies_boundaries.html	Product documentation	Only this detection cites it
hackingthe.cloud/aws/exploitation/iam_privilege_escalation/	Unclassified	7

Detection rules

AWS IAM Permissions Boundary Modified or Removed

Description

Detection logic

Detection requirements

Known benign triggers

MITRE ATT&CK mappings

References

From the source

Licence

Authorship

Detection rules