AWS IAM group can create a login profile for an IAM user with administrative privileges

Description

In AWS environments, some IAM permissions can lead to privilege escalation, where an identity can gain access to another more privileged identity. This rule identifies when a given group can use iam:CreateLoginProfile to create a new login profile for an IAM user with administrative privileges. By creating a new login profile for another user, an adversary could log in as that user and leverage their privileges.

Rationale

In this scenario, there exists at least one privileged IAM group in the account which does not have a login profile set. The identity which triggered this detection can create a login profile for that IAM user, giving them access to the privileges of the compromised user.

Remediation

Datadog recommends reducing the permissions attached to an IAM group to the minimum necessary for the group to fulfill its function. To remediate the issue, either remove the iam:CreateLoginProfile permission entirely or modify the resource the IAM policy specifies.