AWS RDS DB Instance or Cluster Deletion Protection Disabled

Last updated 7 months ago on 2025-01-10

Created a year ago on 2024-06-28

About

Identifies the modification of an AWS RDS DB instance or cluster to remove the deletionProtection feature. Deletion protection is enabled automatically for instances set up through the console and can be used to protect them from unintentional deletion activity. If disabled an instance or cluster can be deleted, destroying sensitive or critical information. Adversaries with the proper permissions can take advantage of this to set up future deletion events against a compromised environment.

Tags

Domain: CloudData Source: AWSData Source: Amazon Web ServicesData Source: AWS RDSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: ImpactLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

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

The deletionProtection feature must be disabled as a prerequisite for deletion of a DB instance or cluster. Ensure that the instance should not be modified in this way before taking action.

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.action in ("ModifyDBInstance", "ModifyDBCluster")
    and event.outcome == "success"
    and stringContains(aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters, "deletionProtection=false")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS RDS DB Instance or Cluster Deletion Protection Disabled 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).