AWS Control Plane Access by Suspicious Process

Last updated 15 days ago on 2026-10-06
Created a month ago on 2026-09-14

About

Identifies a process running from a temporary or user-writable directory, or a script interpreter executing a payload from such a directory, followed by a network connection to an AWS identity, secrets, or management control plane endpoint. This detects credential abuse performed through an AWS SDK such as boto3, aws-sdk-js, or the Go SDK rather than through the aws command line binary. Rules that key on the CLI process name are bypassed entirely by SDK based tooling, which is what most post exploitation malware and supply chain stealers actually use, so this rule is intended as the name independent complement to them.
Tags
Domain: EndpointDomain: CloudPlatform: AWSPlatform: LinuxPlatform: macOSPlatform: WindowsOS: LinuxOS: macOSOS: WindowsService: AWS IAMService: AWS STSService: AWS SSMService: AWS Secrets ManagerService: AWS KMSService: AWS BedrockTactic: DiscoveryData Source: Elastic DefendRule Type: New TermsLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

False Positive Examples
Build systems and CI runners frequently compile or download binaries into temporary directories and then make AWS API calls as part of integration tests. Exclude known runner paths and restrict to interactive or production hosts if alert volume is high.
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-endpoint.events.network-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query
text code block:
event.category : network and host.os.type : (linux or macos or windows) and dns.question.name : ( iam.amazonaws.com or sts.amazonaws.com or bedrock*.amazonaws.com or kms.*.amazonaws.com or organizations.*.amazonaws.com or portal.sso.*.amazonaws.com or secretsmanager.*.amazonaws.com or ssm.*.amazonaws.com or sso.*.amazonaws.com or sts.*.amazonaws.com ) and process.executable : ( ( *\\ProgramData\\* or *\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\* or *\\Users\\Public\\* or *\\Windows\\Temp\\* or /Users/*/Public/* or /Users/Shared/* or /dev/shm/* or /private/tmp/* or /run/* or /tmp/* or /var/run/* or /var/tmp/* or /var/www/* ) and not (/opt/actions-runner/* or /tmp/cargo-install* or /tmp/go-build* or /tmp/pytest-*) ) and not ( process.name: "MsSense.exe" and process.code_signature.subject_name : "Microsoft Windows Publisher" and process.code_signature.trusted : true )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect AWS Control Plane Access by Suspicious Process 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).