AWS IAM Permissions Boundary Modified or Removed

Last updated 9 days ago on 2026-06-18

Created 9 days ago on 2026-06-18

About

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.

Tags

Domain: CloudDomain: IdentityData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS IAMUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationLanguage: kuery

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Account Manipulation (T1098)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples

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.

License

Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type: Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: logs-aws.cloudtrail-*
Related Integrations: aws(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗data_stream.dataset: "aws.cloudtrail"
    and event.provider: "iam.amazonaws.com"
    and event.action: (
        "PutUserPermissionsBoundary" or
        "PutRolePermissionsBoundary" or
        "DeleteUserPermissionsBoundary" or
        "DeleteRolePermissionsBoundary"
    )
    and event.outcome: "success"
    and not aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.type: "AWSService"
    and not user_agent.original: (*terraform* or *pulumi* or *ansible*)
    and not aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.arn: (*terraform* or *pulumi* or *ansible*)
    and not source.as.organization.name: (Amazon* or AMAZON* or Google*)
    and not source.address: ("cloudformation.amazonaws.com" or "servicecatalog.amazonaws.com")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS IAM Permissions Boundary Modified or Removed in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(external, opens in a new tab or window).