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Remove MFA Device

Platform Author Last Update
aws Mehmet Mert Surmeli 2023-07-01

An attacker may attempt to remove MFA from an IAM user, in order to bypass authentication controls.

MITRE IDs

Required Permissions

  • iam:DeactivateMFADevice

Required Parameters

Name Type Description Example Value
user str The name of the user whose MFA device you want to deactivate. example-user
serialnumber str The serial number that uniquely identifies the MFA device.For virtual MFA devices, the serial number is the device ARN. arn:aws:iam::000000000:mfa/MFADevice

Attacker Action

aws iam deactivate-mfa-device --user-name example-user --serial-number arn:aws:iam::000000000:mfa/MFADevice

Detection Case

ELK query

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

eventName:DeactivateMFADevice AND eventSource:iam.amazonaws.com  

Sigma Definition

---
title: Remove MFA Device
id: c4276c66-7d75-4f14-938b-640b6576f912
status: experimental
author: Mehmet Mert Surmeli
date: 2023-07-01
description: An attacker may attempt to remove MFA from an IAM user, in order to bypass authentication controls.
logsource:
  service: cloudtrail
detection:
  selection_source:
    - eventSource: "iam.amazonaws.com"
  events:
    - eventName: "DeactivateMFADevice"
  condition: selection_source AND events
level: low
tags:
  - attack.T1562.001