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AWS Organizations Delegated Administrator Registered

Detects when an AWS member account is registered as a delegated administrator for an AWS service via the RegisterDelegatedAdministrator API. Delegated administrators receive service-level administrative access across…

Description

Detects when an AWS member account is registered as a delegated administrator for an AWS service via the RegisterDelegatedAdministrator API. Delegated administrators receive service-level administrative access across the entire organization without being the management account. An attacker who compromises a principal with organizations permissions can abuse overly permissive managed policies to register a member account they control as a delegated administrator, then use that privileged access to escalate privileges organization-wide and compromise all member accounts.

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 2 ATT&CK techniques it maps to.

Log source category
event_index

Known benign triggers

  • Legitimate cloud platform operations — enabling Security Hub, GuardDuty, or other AWS services at the organization level — require registering a delegated administrator. Validate the called service and target account against your organization's approved delegated admin configuration and a corresponding change management record.

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