Elastic Security Detection Rules

AWS RDS DB Instance Restored

Last updated 4 days ago on 2025-12-01
Created 4 years ago on 2021-06-29

About

Identifies the restoration of an AWS RDS database instance from a snapshot or S3 backup. Adversaries with access to valid credentials may restore copies of existing databases to bypass logging and monitoring controls or to exfiltrate sensitive data from a duplicated environment. This rule detects successful restoration operations using "RestoreDBInstanceFromDBSnapshot" or "RestoreDBInstanceFromS3", which may indicate unauthorized data access or post-compromise defense evasion.
Tags
Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS RDSUse Case: Asset VisibilityTactic: Defense EvasionLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Modify Cloud Compute Infrastructure (T1578)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
Restoring an RDS DB instance may be performed legitimately during troubleshooting, development refresh processes, migrations, or disaster-recovery drills. Validate the user identity, source IP, automation context, and whether the restoration aligns with a known maintenance or testing workflow before treating the event as suspicious. Expected behavior can be exempted through rule exceptions.
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: "rds.amazonaws.com"
    and event.action: ("RestoreDBInstanceFromDBSnapshot" or "RestoreDBInstanceFromS3")
    and event.outcome: "success"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS RDS DB Instance Restored 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).