AWS IAM AdministratorAccess Policy Attached to Group

Last updated 23 days ago on 2025-07-10

Created a year ago on 2024-05-31

About

An adversary with access to a set of compromised credentials may attempt to persist or escalate privileges by attaching additional permissions to user groups the compromised user account belongs to. This rule looks for use of the IAM `AttachGroupPolicy` API operation to attach the highly permissive `AdministratorAccess` AWS managed policy to an existing IAM user group.

Tags

Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS IAMUse Case: Identity and Access AuditTactic: Privilege EscalationTactic: PersistenceLanguage: esql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Account Manipulation (T1098)(opens in a new tab or window)

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

↳ Account Manipulation (T1098)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples

While this can be normal behavior, it should be investigated to ensure validity. Verify whether the user identity should be using the IAM `AttachGroupPolicy` API operation to attach the `AdministratorAccess` policy to the user group.

License

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

Definition

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

from logs-aws.cloudtrail-* metadata _id, _version, _index
| where event.provider == "iam.amazonaws.com" and event.action == "AttachGroupPolicy" and event.outcome == "success"
| dissect aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters "{%{?policyArn}=%{?arn}:%{?aws}:%{?iam}::%{?aws}:%{?policy}/%{policyName},%{?groupName}=%{group.name}}"
| where policyName == "AdministratorAccess"
| keep @timestamp, event.provider, event.action, event.outcome, policyName, group.name

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS IAM AdministratorAccess Policy Attached to Group 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).