---
title: Publicly assumable IAM role can use role chaining to access sensitive data
description: Datadog, the leading service for cloud-scale monitoring.
breadcrumbs: >-
  Docs > Datadog Security > OOTB Rules > Publicly assumable IAM role can use
  role chaining to access sensitive data
---

> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.datadoghq.com/llms.txt).

# Publicly assumable IAM role can use role chaining to access sensitive data

## Description{% #description %}

A publicly assumable IAM role can use role chaining to access sensitive data. This configuration allows any AWS principal, including those from external AWS accounts, to assume the role and then assume one or more other IAM roles in sequence, following a chain of trust relationships to ultimately gain access to resources containing sensitive information such as S3 buckets, RDS databases, or DynamoDB tables. An attacker with any valid AWS credentials can exploit this misconfigured trust policy and follow the role chain to reach protected data.

## Remediation{% #remediation %}

1. [Review and manage IAM roles](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles_manage.html) to restrict the trust policy and limit which principals can assume the role.
1. [Apply IAM security best practices](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html) to ensure role chains follow the principle of least privilege.