AWS Root Console Login Password Spraying

Last updated a month ago on 2026-09-18

Created 2 months ago on 2026-09-01

About

Identifies failed authentication attempts against the AWS Management Console root user from the same source IP address targeting multiple AWS accounts. Password spraying uses few attempts per target across many accounts to avoid lockout, making per-account volume an unreliable signal. This rule detects the cross-account breadth pattern: a single source IP generating root ConsoleLogin failures across two or more distinct AWS accounts. Requires an AWS Organizations-level CloudTrail trail aggregating events from member accounts.

Tags

Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesDomain: IdentityPlatform: AWSData Source: AWS CloudTrailUse Case: Identity and Access AuditTactic: Credential AccessRule Type: ThresholdLanguage: kuery

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Credential Access (TA0006)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Brute Force (T1110)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples

Administrators behind a shared egress address, such as a corporate NAT gateway or VPN concentrator, can trigger this rule when separate people mistype root passwords for different accounts within the window, since a single failure per account is sufficient. An administrator who legitimately holds root credentials for several accounts can also match. Verify whether the source IP is an expected corporate or administrator address, and whether the targeted accounts correspond to that person's scope, before escalating. Repeated failures against a single account do not trigger this rule and are covered by the separate brute-force rule.

License

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

Definition

Rule Type: Threshold Rule
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:signin.amazonaws.com and
event.action:ConsoleLogin and
aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.type:Root and
event.outcome:failure

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS Root Console Login Password Spraying 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).