AWS Sign-In Console Login with Federated User

Last updated a month ago on 2025-10-09
Created a year ago on 2024-08-19

About

Identifies when a federated user logs into the AWS Management Console. Federated users are typically given temporary credentials to access AWS services. If a federated user logs into the AWS Management Console without using MFA, it may indicate a security risk, as MFA adds an additional layer of security to the authentication process. However, CloudTrail does not record whether a Federated User utilized MFA as part of authentication — that MFA decision often occurs at a third-party IdP (e.g., Okta, Azure AD, Google). As a result, CloudTrail fields such as MFAUsed / mfaAuthenticated appear as “No/false” for federated console logins even if IdP MFA was required. This alert should be correlated with IdP authentication logs to verify whether MFA was enforced for the session. Increase priority if you find a related "GetSigninToken" event whose source IP / ASN / geo or user-agent differs from the subsequent "ConsoleLogin" (possible token relay/abuse). Same-IP/UA pairs within a short window are more consistent with expected operator behavior and can be triaged with lower severity.
Tags
Domain: CloudData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWSData Source: AWS Sign-InUse Case: Identity and Access AuditTactic: Initial AccessLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Initial Access (TA0001)(opens in a new tab or window)

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

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
filebeat-*logs-aws.cloudtrail-*
Related Integrations

aws(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
event.dataset: "aws.cloudtrail" and 
    event.provider: "signin.amazonaws.com" and 
    event.action : "ConsoleLogin" and 
    aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.type: "FederatedUser" and
    event.outcome: "success"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS Sign-In Console Login with Federated User 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(opens in a new tab or window).