AWS IAM User Console Login Without MFA

Last updated 6 days ago on 2026-07-13

Created 6 days ago on 2026-07-13

About

Identifies the first observed occurrence, within the configured New Terms history window, of a regular IAM user successfully signing in to the AWS Management Console without multi-factor authentication. A password alone is a weaker control than password-plus-MFA, and an adversary who has phished, guessed, or otherwise obtained a user's password can sign in directly if MFA is not enforced for that user. This rule is scoped to standard IAM users only; it excludes the AWS root user (covered by a dedicated rule) and federated/SSO sign-ins (covered by a dedicated rule that also accounts for IdP-side MFA), since MFAUsed: No is expected in both of those cases for reasons unrelated to this gap.

Tags

Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS Sign-InUse Case: Identity and Access AuditTactic: Initial AccessLanguage: kuery

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Initial Access (TA0001)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Valid Accounts (T1078)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples

Environments that do not enforce MFA for all IAM users will see this regularly. This is a New Terms rule, so it only fires once per `user.id` within the configured history window (7d); use it to drive MFA enrollment and enforcement rather than treating every occurrence as an incident, unless MFA is a mandated control in your environment.

License

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

Definition

Rule Type: New Terms Rule
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: logs-aws.cloudtrail-*
Related Integrations: aws(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗data_stream.dataset: "aws.cloudtrail"
    and event.provider: "signin.amazonaws.com"
    and event.action: "ConsoleLogin"
    and event.outcome: "success"
    and aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.type: "IAMUser"
    and aws.cloudtrail.console_login.additional_eventdata.mfa_used: false

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS IAM User Console Login Without MFA 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).