VIEW RULE IN DATADOG VIEW IDENTITY RISKS

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 EC2 instance can use sts:AssumeRole to assume multiple IAM roles with administrative privileges in different accounts in your AWS environment. By assuming these more privileged roles, an adversary can leverage their permissions for further access.

Rationale

The identity which triggered this detection can assume multiple IAM roles with administrative privileges in different accounts in your AWS environment, giving them access to the privileges of that role.

Remediation

Datadog recommends reducing the permissions attached to an EC2 instance to the minimum required for the role to fulfill its function. To remediate the issue, either remove the sts:AssumeRole permission entirely, or modify the resources specified in the IAM policy.