AWS EKS Service Account Modified RBAC Objects

Last updated 2 days ago on 2026-10-21
Created 3 months ago on 2026-08-03

About

Detects write operations performed by Kubernetes service accounts against RBAC resources (Roles, ClusterRoles, RoleBindings, ClusterRoleBindings). Service accounts typically do not manage RBAC directly; this activity may indicate token abuse, misconfigured permissions, or unauthorized privilege escalation.
Tags
Domain: CloudDomain: ContainersPlatform: AWSPlatform: KubernetesData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: Kubernetes API Server Audit LogsService: AWS EKSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationTactic: PersistenceRule Type: Custom Query (KQL)Profile: BetaLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

Persistence (TA0003)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

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.eks_audit-*
Related Integrations

aws(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query
text code block:
data_stream.dataset:"aws.eks_audit" and aws.eks.audit.annotations.authorization_k8s_io/decision:"allow" and ( aws.eks.audit.user.username:( system\:serviceaccount\:* and not ( "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:clusterrole-aggregation-controller" or "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:generic-garbage-collector" ) ) or aws.eks.audit.impersonatedUser.username:( system\:serviceaccount\:* and not ( "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:clusterrole-aggregation-controller" or "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:generic-garbage-collector" ) ) ) and aws.eks.audit.objectRef.resource:("clusterrolebindings" or "clusterroles" or "rolebindings" or "roles") and aws.eks.audit.verb:("create" or "delete" or "patch" or "update")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS EKS Service Account Modified RBAC Objects 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).