User with privilege escalation by actions 'lambda:CreateFunction' and 'iam:PassRole' and 'lambda:InvokeFunction'

This product is not supported for your selected Datadog site. ().

Metadata

Id: 8055dec2-efb8-4fe6-8837-d9bed6ff202a

Cloud Provider: AWS

Platform: Terraform

Severity: Medium

Category: Access Control

Learn More

Description

Granting a user the 'lambda:CreateFunction', 'lambda:InvokeFunction', and 'iam:PassRole' permissions with the Resource set to "*" allows them to create and execute Lambda functions under any IAM role, potentially escalating their privileges in the AWS environment. This misconfiguration means the user can attach highly privileged roles to their Lambda functions and run them, effectively gaining any permissions those roles have—including full administrative access—without approval or oversight. If left unaddressed, this could lead to complete compromise of AWS resources, data theft, or account takeover.

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_user" "cosmic" {
  name = "cosmic"
}

resource "aws_iam_user_policy" "test_inline_policy" {
  name = "test_inline_policy"
  user = aws_iam_user.cosmic.name

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


resource "aws_iam_policy_attachment" "test-attach" {
  name       = "test-attachment"
  users      = [aws_iam_user.cosmic.name]
  roles      = [aws_iam_role.role.name]
  groups     = [aws_iam_group.group.name]
  policy_arn = aws_iam_policy.policy.arn
}


resource "aws_iam_policy" "policy" {
  name        = "test-policy"
  description = "A test policy"

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