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Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills/skills/detecting-aws-iam-privilege-escalation/SKILL.md
T
mukul975 efca3ec611 feat: add NIST CSF 2.0 nist_csf field to all 754 cybersecurity skills
Mapped every skill to NIST CSF 2.0 subcategory IDs (GV/ID/PR/DE/RS/RC functions)
based on subdomain and content analysis. Restores 11 skills corrupted during
prior rebase, re-enriching with ATLAS, D3FEND, NIST AI RMF, and CSF 2.0 fields.

All 754 skills now carry structured mappings for all 5 security frameworks:
- MITRE ATT&CK (in tags)
- MITRE ATLAS v5.5 (atlas_techniques)
- MITRE D3FEND v1.3 (d3fend_techniques)
- NIST AI RMF 1.0 (nist_ai_rmf)
- NIST CSF 2.0 (nist_csf)
2026-04-06 11:17:40 +02:00

2.3 KiB

name, description, domain, subdomain, tags, version, author, license, nist_csf
name description domain subdomain tags version author license nist_csf
detecting-aws-iam-privilege-escalation Detect AWS IAM privilege escalation paths using boto3 and Cloudsplaining policy analysis to identify overly permissive policies, dangerous permission combinations, and least-privilege violations cybersecurity cloud-security
aws
iam
privilege-escalation
cloudsplaining
boto3
policy-analysis
least-privilege
1.0 mahipal Apache-2.0
PR.IR-01
ID.AM-08
GV.SC-06
DE.CM-01

Detecting AWS IAM Privilege Escalation

Overview

This skill uses boto3 and Cloudsplaining-style analysis to identify IAM privilege escalation paths in AWS accounts. It downloads the account authorization details, analyzes each policy for dangerous permission combinations (iam:PassRole + lambda:CreateFunction, iam:CreatePolicyVersion, sts:AssumeRole), and flags policies that violate least-privilege principles.

When to Use

  • When investigating security incidents that require detecting aws iam privilege escalation
  • When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
  • When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
  • When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.8+ with boto3 library
  • AWS credentials with IAM read-only access (iam:GetAccountAuthorizationDetails)
  • Optional: cloudsplaining Python package for HTML report generation

Steps

  1. Download IAM Authorization Details — Call iam:GetAccountAuthorizationDetails to retrieve all users, groups, roles, and policies
  2. Analyze Policies for Privilege Escalation — Check each policy for known escalation permission combinations
  3. Identify Wildcard Resource Policies — Flag policies using Resource: "*" with dangerous actions
  4. Map Principal-to-Policy Relationships — Build a graph of which principals can access which escalation paths
  5. Score and Prioritize Findings — Rank findings by severity based on escalation vector type
  6. Generate Report — Produce structured JSON report with remediation guidance

Expected Output

  • JSON report of privilege escalation findings with severity scores
  • List of dangerous permission combinations per principal
  • Wildcard resource policy audit results
  • Remediation recommendations for each finding