AWS Root Login Without MFA

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Identifies attempts to login to AWS as the root user without using multi-factor authentication (MFA). Amazon AWS best practices indicate that the root user should be protected by MFA.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • logs-aws*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 10 minutes

Searches indices from: now-60m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Cloud
  • AWS
  • Continuous Monitoring
  • SecOps
  • Identity and Access

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.9.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.2

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Potential false positives

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Some organizations allow root-user logins without MFA, however this is not considered best practice by AWS and increases the risk of compromised credentials.

Investigation guide

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The AWS Filebeat module must be enabled to use this rule.

Rule query

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event.dataset:aws.cloudtrail and event.provider:signin.amazonaws.com
and event.action:ConsoleLogin and
aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.type:Root and
aws.cloudtrail.console_login.additional_eventdata.mfa_used:false and
event.outcome:success

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 3 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.10.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.module:aws and event.dataset:aws.cloudtrail and
    event.provider:signin.amazonaws.com and event.action:ConsoleLogin and
    aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.type:Root and
    aws.cloudtrail.console_login.additional_eventdata.mfa_used:false and
    event.outcome:success