Elastic Security Detection Rules

AWS RDS Snapshot Deleted

Last updated 7 months ago on 2025-01-15
Created a year ago on 2024-06-29

About

Identifies the deletion of an AWS RDS DB snapshot. Snapshots contain a full backup of an entire DB instance. Unauthorized deletion of snapshots can make it impossible to recover critical or sensitive data. This rule detects deleted snapshots and instances modified so that backupRetentionPeriod is set to 0 which disables automated backups and is functionally similar to deleting the system snapshot.
Tags
Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS RDSUse Case: Asset VisibilityTactic: ImpactLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Impact (TA0040)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Data Destruction (T1485)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
Snapshots may be deleted by a system administrator. Verify whether the user identity should be making changes in your environment. Snapshot deletions by unfamiliar users or hosts should be investigated. If known behavior is causing false positives, it can be exempted from the rule.
License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
filebeat-*logs-aws.cloudtrail-*
Related Integrations

aws(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
any where event.dataset == "aws.cloudtrail"
    and event.provider == "rds.amazonaws.com"
    and event.outcome == "success"
    and (
        event.action in ("DeleteDBSnapshot", "DeleteDBClusterSnapshot") or
        (event.action == "ModifyDBInstance" and stringContains(aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters, "backupRetentionPeriod=0"))
    )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS RDS Snapshot Deleted 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).