Classification:

attack

Tactic:

TA0004-privilege-escalation

Technique:

T1098-account-manipulation

VIEW RULE IN DATADOG VIEW SIGNALS

Goal

Detect when an AWS principal is assigned permissions on multiple Amazon EKS clusters in a short amount of time. This can be indicative of an attacker compromising your AWS environment and laterally moving to your EKS clusters.

Strategy

This rule leverages CloudTrail and triggers if CreateAccessEntry or AssociateAccessPolicy events are triggered for the same AWS principal on more than 5 unique EKS clusters.

To learn more about EKS Cluster Access Management, see this guide on Datadog Security Labs: Deep dive into the new Amazon EKS Cluster Access Management features.

Triage and response

1. Determine if @requestParameters.principalArn (the grantee) should be granted permissions on the target EKS clusters.
2. Determine if {{@userIdentity.session_name}} (the grantor) should have granted permissions on the target EKS clusters.
3. If the API calls were not made by the user:

• Rotate user credentials.
• Determine what other API calls were made by the user.
• Revert the permissions change by removing the access entry.

4. If the API calls were made by the user:

• Determine if the user should be granting access to the cluster.
• If not, see if other API calls were made by the user and determine if they warrant further investigation.