cis-aws-foundations-5.4

Ensure IAM policy changes are monitored

Description

Real-time monitoring of API calls can be achieved by directing CloudTrail Logs to CloudWatch Logs or an external Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) environment, and establishing corresponding metric filters and alarms.

It is recommended that a metric filter and alarm be established for changes made to Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies.

Rationale

CloudWatch is an AWS native service that allows you to observe and monitor resources and applications. CloudTrail logs can also be sent to an external Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) environment for monitoring and alerting.

Monitoring changes to IAM policies will help ensure authentication and authorization controls remain intact.

Impact

Monitoring these changes may result in a number of "false positives," especially in larger environments. This alert may require more tuning than others to eliminate some of those erroneous notifications.

Audit Procedure

Using AWS CLI

If you are using CloudTrail trails and CloudWatch, perform the following to ensure that there is at least one active multi-region CloudTrail trail with the prescribed metric filters and alarms configured:

1. Identify the log group name that is configured for use with the active multi-region CloudTrail trail:

• List all CloudTrails:

aws cloudtrail describe-trails

• Identify multi-region CloudTrail trails: Trails with "IsMultiRegionTrail" set to true

• Note the value associated with "Name":<trail-name>

• Note the <trail-log-group-name> within the value associated with "CloudWatchLogsLogGroupArn"

  • Example: arn:aws:logs:<region>:<account-id>:log-group:<trail-log-group-name>:*

• Ensure the identified multi-region CloudTrail trail is active:

aws cloudtrail get-trail-status --name <trail-name>

• Ensure IsLogging is set to TRUE

• Ensure the identified multi-region CloudTrail trail captures all management events:

aws cloudtrail get-event-selectors --trail-name <trail-name>

• Ensure there is at least one event selector for a trail with IncludeManagementEvents set to true and ReadWriteType set to All

2. Get a list of all associated metric filters for the <trail-log-group-name> captured in step 1:

aws logs describe-metric-filters --log-group-name <trail-log-group-name>

3. Ensure the output from the above command contains the following:

"filterPattern": "{($.eventName=DeleteGroupPolicy)||($.eventName=DeleteRolePolicy)||($.eventName=DeleteUserPolicy)||($.eventName=PutGroupPolicy)||($.eventName=PutRolePolicy)||($.eventName=PutUserPolicy)||($.eventName=CreatePolicy)||($.eventName=DeletePolicy)||($.eventName=CreatePolicyVersion)||($.eventName=DeletePolicyVersion)||($.eventName=AttachRolePolicy)||($.eventName=DetachRolePolicy)||($.eventName=AttachUserPolicy)||($.eventName=DetachUserPolicy)||($.eventName=AttachGroupPolicy)||($.eventName=DetachGroupPolicy)}"

4. Note the <iam-changes-metric> value associated with the filterPattern from step 3.

5. Get a list of CloudWatch alarms, and filter on the <iam-change-metric> captured in step 4:

aws cloudwatch describe-alarms --query 'MetricAlarms[?MetricName==<iam-changes-metric>]'

6. Note the AlarmActions value; this will provide the SNS topic ARN value.

7. Ensure there is at least one active subscriber to the SNS topic:

aws sns list-subscriptions-by-topic --topic-arn <sns-topic-arn>

• At least one subscription should have "SubscriptionArn" with a valid AWS ARN.
  • Example of valid "SubscriptionArn": arn:aws:sns:<region>:<account-id>:<sns-topic-name>:<subscription-id>

Expected Result

A metric filter exists with the filter pattern matching IAM policy change events, a CloudWatch alarm is configured for the metric, and the alarm has an active SNS topic with at least one subscriber.

Remediation

Using AWS CLI

If you are using CloudTrail trails and CloudWatch, perform the following steps to set up the metric filter, alarm, SNS topic, and subscription:

1. Create a metric filter based on the provided filter pattern that checks for IAM policy changes and the <trail-log-group-name> taken from audit step 1:

aws logs put-metric-filter --log-group-name `<trail-log-group-name>` --filter-name `<iam-changes-metric>` --metric-transformations metricName= `<iam-changes-metric>`,metricNamespace='CISBenchmark',metricValue=1 --filter-pattern '{($.eventName=DeleteGroupPolicy)||($.eventName=DeleteRolePolicy)||($.eventName=DeleteUserPolicy)||($.eventName=PutGroupPolicy)||($.eventName=PutRolePolicy)||($.eventName=PutUserPolicy)||($.eventName=CreatePolicy)||($.eventName=DeletePolicy)||($.eventName=CreatePolicyVersion)||($.eventName=DeletePolicyVersion)||($.eventName=AttachRolePolicy)||($.eventName=DetachRolePolicy)||($.eventName=AttachUserPolicy)||($.eventName=DetachUserPolicy)||($.eventName=AttachGroupPolicy)||($.eventName=DetachGroupPolicy)}'

2. Create an SNS topic that the alarm will notify:

aws sns create-topic --name <sns-topic-name>

3. Create an SNS subscription for the topic created in step 2:

aws sns subscribe --topic-arn <sns-topic-arn> --protocol <sns-protocol> --notification-endpoint <sns-subscription-endpoints>

4. Create an alarm that is associated with the CloudWatch Logs metric filter created in step 1 and the SNS topic created in step 2:

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm --alarm-name `<iam-changes-alarm>` --metric-name `<iam-changes-metric>` --statistic Sum --period 300 --threshold 1 --comparison-operator GreaterThanOrEqualToThreshold --evaluation-periods 1 --namespace 'CISBenchmark' --alarm-actions <sns-topic-arn>

Default Value

By default, CloudTrail records IAM policy change events, but no CloudWatch metric filters or alarms are configured. This means changes (e.g., CreatePolicy, AttachRolePolicy, DeletePolicy) are logged but not actively monitored or alerted on unless you explicitly set up filters and alarms.

References

1. CCE-79189-7
2. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/receive-cloudtrail-log-files-from-multiple-regions.html
3. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/cloudwatch-alarms-for-cloudtrail.html
4. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/SubscribeTopic.html

CIS Controls

Profile

Level 1 | Manual