AWS EKS RBAC Wildcard Elevation on Existing Role

Last updated 3 days ago on 2026-10-20

Created 3 months ago on 2026-08-03

About

Flags an existing Role or ClusterRole being changed (patch or update) to a wildcard on every API resource and verb. This may be indicative of a deliberate privilege expansion but may also be a nefarious attempt at 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 EscalationRule Type: ES|QLProfile: BetaLanguage: esql

Severity

high

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

Platform installers, GitOps controllers, and emergency break-glass roles sometimes ship or widen wildcard ClusterRoles; correlate with change records and narrow by user or service account when baselined.

License

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

Definition

Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Related Integrations: aws(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗from logs-aws.eks_audit-* metadata _id, _index, _version
| where
  aws.eks.audit.objectRef.resource in ("roles", "clusterroles") and
  aws.eks.audit.verb in ("update", "patch") and
  `aws.eks.audit.annotations.authorization_k8s_io/decision` == "allow" and
  aws.eks.audit.level == "RequestResponse" and
  aws.eks.audit.stage == "ResponseComplete" and
  aws.eks.audit.sourceIPs is not null and
  not aws.eks.audit.sourceIPs in ("::1", "127.0.0.1") and
  KQL(""" aws.eks.audit.responseObject.rules.verbs:"*" and aws.eks.audit.responseObject.rules.resources:"*" """)
| keep user.name, user_agent.original, event.action, source.ip, aws.eks.audit.verb, aws.eks.audit.objectRef.resource, aws.eks.audit.objectRef.name, aws.eks.audit.requestURI, aws.eks.audit.user.username, aws.eks.audit.user.groups, `aws.eks.audit.annotations.authorization_k8s_io/decision`, event.original, _id, _version, _index, data_stream.namespace

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS EKS RBAC Wildcard Elevation on Existing Role 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).