AWS S3 Bucket MFA Delete Disabled
Detects when MFA Delete is disabled on an Amazon S3 bucket. MFA Delete is an additional layer of security for versioned S3 buckets that requires multi-factor authentication to permanently delete object versions or…
Description
Detects when MFA Delete is disabled on an Amazon S3 bucket. MFA Delete is an additional layer of security for versioned S3 buckets that requires multi-factor authentication to permanently delete object versions or disable versioning. When MFA Delete is disabled, an adversary with S3 write access and a compromised long-term access key can permanently delete object versions, a critical step in ransomware attacks that target S3 versioning as a backup mechanism. MFA Delete is configured via PutBucketVersioning with the MfaDelete parameter set to Disabled.
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
- ContainersESXiIaaSLinuxmacOSNetwork DevicesWindows
The rule states no platform. This is derived from the ATT&CK technique it maps to.
- Log source category
- event_index
Known benign triggers
- Disabling MFA Delete when rotating the root account credentials used to manage versioning may trigger this rule. This operation requires root account credentials and is uncommon in automated pipelines.
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/AmazonS3/latest/API/API_PutBucketVersioning.html | 2 |
| docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/MultiFactorAuthenticationDelete.html | Only this detection cites it |
| rhinosecuritylabs.com/aws/s3-ransomware-part-1-attack-vector/ | 6from 2 sources |
| www.halcyon.ai/blog/abusing-aws-native-services-ransomware-encrypting-s3-buckets-with-sse-c | 3 |
From the source
- At source
- Open at source
- Upstream identifier
- b8654454-2757-41b4-ae1a-69b3be704c28
- Tagged by the source as
- Data Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWSData Source: AWS CloudTrailDomain: CloudPlatform: AWSResources: Investigation GuideRule Type: Custom Query (KQL)Service: AWS S3Tactic: Impact
Licence
- Published under
- Elastic License 2.0Read the licence
- Attribution
- Required
Authorship
- Written by
- Published
- Sep 20, 2026
- Version
- 2