Add Api Key To Existing Iam User (aws)

Platform	Author	Last Update
aws	Nick Jones	2024-12-02

An adversary may attempt to maintain access by creating an API key attached to an existing privileged user

MITRE IDs

T1098

Required Permissions

iam:CreateAccessKey

Required Parameters

Name	Type	Description	Example Value
user	str	IAM user to generate the API key for	root

Attacker Action

aws iam create-access-key --user-name root

Detection Case

ELK query

When logs are ingested into ELK, the following Lucene query can be used to identify relevant events.

eventName:CreateAccessKey AND eventSource:iam.amazonaws.com

Sigma Definition

---
title: Add API key to existing IAM user
id: 1570ea27-492c-4615-a518-59155ba03416
status: experimental
author: Nick Jones
date: 2024-12-02
description: An adversary may attempt to maintain access by creating an API key attached to an existing privileged user
logsource:
  service: cloudtrail
detection:
  selection_source:
    - eventSource: "iam.amazonaws.com"
  events:
    - eventName: "CreateAccessKey"
  condition: selection_source and events
level: low
tags:
  - attack.T1098


falsepositives:
  - Developers making legitimate changes to the environment. Verify whether the user identity, user agent, and/or hostname should be making changes in your environment.