LoFP LoFP / break-glass admin tooling, security scanners, or approved controllers that legitimately use impersonation with privileged targets may match if not covered by exclusions. map expected callers and expand `not user.name` filters as needed for your environment.

Techniques

Sample rules

Kubernetes API Request Impersonating Privileged Identity

Description

Detects Kubernetes API requests where a user is impersonating a privileged cluster identity such as system:kube-controller-manager, system:admin, system:anonymous, or a member of the system:masters group. These identities have broad cluster-wide permissions including unrestricted access to all secrets, the ability to create tokens for any service account, schedule pods on any node, and modify RBAC policies. An attacker impersonating system:masters gains full cluster-admin equivalent access, while impersonating system:kube-controller-manager grants access to every secret in every namespace and the ability to mint service account tokens for lateral movement.

Detection logic

data_stream.dataset:kubernetes.audit_logs and 
kubernetes.audit.impersonatedUser.username:(* and not ("eks-event-service:event-controller" or eks\:*)) and 
kubernetes.audit.annotations.authorization_k8s_io/decision:allow and 
kubernetes.audit.verb:(create or delete or get or list or patch or update) and 
(kubernetes.audit.impersonatedUser.username:(admin or cluster-admin or kubernetes-admin or "system:admin" or "system:anonymous" or "system:apiserver" or "system:kube-controller-manager" or "system:kube-proxy" or "system:kube-scheduler" or "system:volume-scheduler" or system\:node\:* or system\:serviceaccount\:kube-system\:*) or kubernetes.audit.impersonatedUser.groups:(cluster-admin or "system:cluster-admins" or "system:masters")) and 
not user.name:(acsService or aksService or masterclient or nodeclient or "system:kube-controller-manager" or "system:kube-scheduler" or arn\:aws\:iam\:*\:role/aws-service-role* or arn\:aws\:sts\:*\:assumed-role/AWSServiceRoleForAmazonEKS* or arn\:aws\:sts\:*\:assumed-role/AWSServiceRoleForAmazonEKSNodegroup* or eks\:* or system\:node\:* or system\:serviceaccount\:kube-system\:*)