public access is a common configuration used to enable access from outside a private vpc. ensure that the instance should not be modified in this way before taking action.

Techniques

T1556

Sample rules

AWS RDS DB Instance Made Public

source: elastic
technicques:
- T1556

Description

Identifies the creation or modification of an Amazon RDS DB instance or cluster where the “publiclyAccessible” attribute is set to “true”. Publicly accessible RDS instances expose a network endpoint on the public internet, which may allow unauthorized access if combined with overly permissive security groups, weak authentication, or misconfigured IAM policies. Adversaries may enable public access on an existing instance, or create a new publicly accessible instance, to establish persistence, move data outside of controlled network boundaries, or bypass internal access controls.

Detection logic

any where event.dataset == "aws.cloudtrail"
    and event.provider == "rds.amazonaws.com"
    and event.outcome == "success"
    and (
        (event.action == "ModifyDBInstance" and stringContains(aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters, "publiclyAccessible=true"))
        or
        (event.action in ("CreateDBInstance", "CreateDBCluster") and stringContains(aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters, "publiclyAccessible=true"))
    )