Role with privilege escalation by actions 'iam:PutUserPolicy'

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Metadata

Id: 8f75840d-9ee7-42f3-b203-b40e3979eb12

Cloud Provider: AWS

Platform: Terraform

Severity: Medium

Category: Access Control

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Description

Allowing the iam:PutUserPolicy action with a Resource value of "*" in a Terraform AWS IAM role or policy configuration allows any user assigned the role to attach arbitrary policies to any users in the AWS account. This creates a significant privilege escalation vulnerability, as an attacker could grant themselves or others increased permissions, potentially leading to full administrative access. To mitigate this risk, the scope of the PutUserPolicy action should be strictly restricted to only the necessary resources and users.

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_role" "cosmic" {
  name = "cosmic"
}

resource "aws_iam_role_policy" "test_inline_policy" {
  name = "test_inline_policy"
  role = aws_iam_role.cosmic.name

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