Detection: ASL AWS UpdateLoginProfile

Updated Date: 2025-01-09 ID: 5b3f63a3-865b-4637-9941-f98bd1a50c0d Author: Patrick Bareiss, Splunk Type: TTP Product: Splunk Enterprise Security

Description

The following analytic detects an AWS CloudTrail event where a user with permissions updates the login profile of another user. It leverages CloudTrail logs to identify instances where the user making the change is different from the user whose profile is being updated. This activity is significant because it can indicate privilege escalation attempts, where an attacker uses a compromised account to gain higher privileges. If confirmed malicious, this could allow the attacker to escalate their privileges, potentially leading to unauthorized access and control over sensitive resources within the AWS environment.

Search

1`amazon_security_lake` api.operation=UpdateLoginProfile 
2| fillnull 
3| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by api.operation actor.user.uid actor.user.account.uid http_request.user_agent src_endpoint.ip cloud.region 
4| rename actor.user.uid as user, src_endpoint.ip as src_ip, cloud.region as region, http_request.user_agent as user_agent 
5| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
6| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
7| `asl_aws_updateloginprofile_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
ASL AWS CloudTrail	AWS	`'aws:asl'`	`'aws_asl'`

Macros Used

Name	Value
amazon_security_lake	`sourcetype=aws:asl`
asl_aws_updateloginprofile_filter	`search *`

asl_aws_updateloginprofile_filter is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Annotations

- MITRE ATT&CK

+ Kill Chain Phases

+ NIST

+ CIS

- Threat Actors

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1136.003	Cloud Account	Persistence
T1136	Create Account	Persistence

Installation

DE.CM

CIS 10

APT29

LAPSUS$

Indrik Spider

Scattered Spider

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Setting	Value
Disabled	true
Cron Schedule	`0 * * * *`
Earliest Time	`-70m@m`
Latest Time	`-10m@m`
Schedule Window	`auto`
Creates Notable	Yes
Rule Title	`%name%`
Rule Description	`%description%`
Notable Event Fields	user, dest
Creates Risk Event	True

This configuration file applies to all detections of type TTP. These detections will use Risk Based Alerting and generate Notable Events.

Implementation

The detection is based on Amazon Security Lake events from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is a centralized data lake that provides security-related data from AWS services. To use this detection, you must ingest CloudTrail logs from Amazon Security Lake into Splunk. To run this search, ensure that you ingest events using the latest version of Splunk Add-on for Amazon Web Services (https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/1876) or the Federated Analytics App.

Known False Positives

While this search has no known false positives, it is possible that an AWS admin has legitimately created keys for another user.

Associated Analytic Story

AWS IAM Privilege Escalation

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Risk Message:

User $user$ from IP address $src_ip$ updated the login profile of another user

Risk Object	Risk Object Type	Risk Score	Threat Objects
user	user	30	src_ip

References

Detection Testing

Test Type	Status	Dataset	Source	Sourcetype
Validation	✅ Passing	N/A	N/A	N/A
Unit	✅ Passing	Dataset	`aws_asl`	`aws:asl`
Integration	✅ Passing	Dataset	`aws_asl`	`aws:asl`

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

Source: GitHub | Version: 1