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 user can use iam:CreateAccessKey to create a new access keys for an IAM user with administrative privileges. By creating a new access key pair for another user, an adversary could use those credentials to operate as that user and leverage their privileges.

Rationale

The identity which triggered this detection can create an access key pair for an IAM user with administrative privileges, giving them access to the privileges of the compromised user.

Remediation

Datadog recommends reducing the permissions attached to an IAM user to the minimum required for the user to fulfill their function. To remediate the issue, either remove the sts:CreateAccessKey permission entirely or modify the resource specified in the IAM policy.