Group with privilege escalation by actions 'iam:AttachGroupPolicy'

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Metadata

Id: 70b42736-efee-4bce-80d5-50358ed94990

Cloud Provider: AWS

Platform: Terraform

Severity: Medium

Category: Access Control

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Description

Allowing an IAM group the iam:AttachGroupPolicy action with a Resource set to "*" enables any user in that group to attach any policy, including those with administrator privileges, to any group. This creates a significant privilege escalation risk, where users can grant themselves or others far greater permissions than originally intended by attaching powerful policies. If left unaddressed, this can lead to full account compromise, unauthorized access, and loss of control over all AWS resources.

Compliant Code Examples

resource "aws_iam_user" "cosmic2" {
  name = "cosmic2"
}

resource "aws_iam_user_policy" "inline_policy_run_instances2" {
  name = "inline_policy_run_instances"
  user = aws_iam_user.cosmic2.name

  policy = jsonencode({
    Version = "2012-10-17"
    Statement = [
      {
        Action = [
          "ec2:Describe*",
        ]
        Effect   = "Allow"
        Resource = "*"
      },
    ]
  })
}

Non-Compliant Code Examples

resource "aws_iam_group" "cosmic" {
  name = "cosmic"
}

resource "aws_iam_group_policy" "test_inline_policy" {
  name = "test_inline_policy"
  group = aws_iam_group.cosmic.name

  policy = jsonencode({
    Version = "2012-10-17"
    Statement = [
      {
        Action = [
          "iam:AttachGroupPolicy",
        ]
        Effect   = "Allow"
        Resource = "*"
      },
    ]
  })
}