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AWS Anomalous Secrets Manager Batch Retrieval

The following analytic detects an AWS principal making more than 10 distinct successful Secrets Manager BatchGetSecretValue API calls within one hour. It groups calls by AWS account and user identity ARN and…

Description

The following analytic detects an AWS principal making more than 10 distinct successful Secrets Manager BatchGetSecretValue API calls within one hour. It groups calls by AWS account and user identity ARN and deduplicates CloudTrail events by event ID. Repeated batch retrieval may indicate bulk access to secrets using a compromised identity, although legitimate automation can produce similar activity.

Detection logic

Detection requirements

Platform
IaaS

The rule states no platform. This is derived from the ATT&CK technique it maps to.

Log source category
aws_cloudtrail

Known benign triggers

  • Legitimate administrators, deployment systems, credential-rotation services, incident-response tooling, or newly deployed applications may use BatchGetSecretValue for the first time. A principal may trigger the detection again when it has not used the API during the preceding seven days. Review the principal, source IP address, user agent, account, region, requested secret identifiers, and surrounding CloudTrail activity to determine whether the request was authorized.

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