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AWSCloudTrail - Privilege escalation via CloudFormation policy

Description

Detects creation of inline IAM policies with CloudFormation and IAM permissions associated with privilege escalation pathways, including iam:PassRole plus stack creation capabilities. This pattern can enable indirect elevation and should be investigated for unauthorized policy changes.

Rule type: Scheduled
Version: 1.0.2
Declared status: Available
Query frequency: 1d
Query period: 1d
Trigger: gt 0

Declared MITRE coverage

PrivilegeEscalation T1098.003

Declared sources

Metadata from the source file. No dependencies inferred from KQL.

Connectors

AWS

Data types

AWSCloudTrail

KQL query

Original query, unchanged.

AWSCloudTrail
  | where EventName in ("PutUserPolicy","PutRolePolicy","PutGroupPolicy") and isempty(ErrorCode) and isempty(ErrorMessage)
  | extend PolicyName = tostring(parse_json(RequestParameters).policyName)
  | extend Statement = parse_json(tostring((parse_json(RequestParameters).policyDocument))).Statement
  | mvexpand Statement
  | extend Action = parse_json(Statement).Action , Effect = tostring(parse_json(Statement).Effect), Resource = tostring(parse_json(Statement).Resource), Condition = tostring(parse_json(Statement).Condition)
  | extend Action = tostring(Action)
  | where Effect =~ "Allow" and (((Action has "iam:*" or Action has "iam:PassRole") and Action has "cloudformation:*") or ((Action has "iam:*" or Action has "iam:PassRole") and Action contains "cloudformation:DescribeStacks" and Action contains "cloudformation:CreateStack") or ((Action contains "iam:*" or Action contains "iam:PassRole") and Action contains "cloudformation:Describe*" and Action contains "cloudformation:Create*")) and Resource == "*" and Condition == ""
  | extend UserIdentityArn = iif(isempty(UserIdentityArn), tostring(parse_json(Resources)[0].ARN), UserIdentityArn)
  | extend UserName = tostring(split(UserIdentityArn, '/')[-1])
  | extend AccountName = case( UserIdentityPrincipalid == "Anonymous", "Anonymous", isempty(UserIdentityUserName), UserName, UserIdentityUserName)
  | extend AccountName = iif(AccountName contains "@", tostring(split(AccountName, '@', 0)[0]), AccountName),
    AccountUPNSuffix = iif(AccountName contains "@", tostring(split(AccountName, '@', 1)[0]), "")
  | distinct TimeGenerated, EventName, PolicyName, SourceIpAddress, RecipientAccountId, AccountName, AccountUPNSuffix, UserIdentityArn, UserIdentityUserName

Declared entities

AccountIP

Source provenance

GitHub

Displayed values come from files in Azure/Azure-Sentinel. They describe the published template, not your workspace configuration.

File: Solutions/Amazon Web Services/Analytic Rules/AWS_PrivilegeEscalationViaCloudFormationPolicy.yaml ↗
Commit: 9800e51 ↗
Source identifier: 719d5204-10ab-4b1f-aee1-da7326750260

Additional source files 2

Solutions/Amazon Web Services/Analytic Rules/AWS_PrivilegeEscalationViaCloudFormationPolicy.yamlsource ↗Solutions/Amazon Web Services/Data/Solution_AmazonWebServices.jsonsolution-membership ↗

GSTEP / CATALOG TRACKING

Added to catalog : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC
Last change observed : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC

GSTEP sync dates, separate from the source content’s publication dates.