Elastic Security Detection Rules

AWS EC2 User Data Retrieval for EC2 Instance

Last updated 7 days ago on 2025-06-17
Created a year ago on 2024-04-14

About

Identifies discovery request DescribeInstanceAttribute with the attribute userData and instanceId in AWS CloudTrail logs. This may indicate an attempt to retrieve user data from an EC2 instance. Adversaries may use this information to gather sensitive data from the instance such as hardcoded credentials or to identify potential vulnerabilities. This is a New Terms rule that identifies the first time an IAM user or role requests the user data for a specific EC2 instance.
Tags
Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: Amazon EC2Use Case: Log AuditingTactic: DiscoveryLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Discovery (TA0007)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Cloud Infrastructure Discovery (T1580)(opens in a new tab or window)

Credential Access (TA0006)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Unsecured Credentials (T1552)(opens in a new tab or window)

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

Definition

Rule Type
New Terms Rule
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: "ec2.amazonaws.com"
    and event.action: "DescribeInstanceAttribute"
    and event.outcome: "success"
    and aws.cloudtrail.flattened.request_parameters.attribute: "userData"
    and not aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.invoked_by: (
        "AWS Internal" or
        "cloudformation.amazonaws.com"
    )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS EC2 User Data Retrieval for EC2 Instance 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).