AWS Root Login Without MFAedit

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: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.9.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.13.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positivesedit

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

Investigation guideedit

## Config

The AWS Fleet integration, Filebeat module, or similarly structured data is required to be compatible with this rule.

Rule queryedit

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 mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 5 (7.13.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
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