ASL AWS IAM Successful Group Deletion

name: ASL AWS IAM Successful Group Deletion
id: 1bbe54f1-93d7-4764-8a01-ddaa12ece7ac
version: 9
date: '2026-02-25'
author: Patrick Bareiss, Splunk
status: production
type: Hunting
description: The following analytic detects the successful deletion of a group within AWS IAM, leveraging CloudTrail IAM events. This action, while not inherently malicious, can serve as a precursor to more sinister activities, such as unauthorized access or privilege escalation attempts. By monitoring for such deletions, the analytic aids in identifying potential preparatory steps towards an attack, allowing for early detection and mitigation. The identification of this behavior is crucial for a SOC to prevent the potential impact of an attack, which could include unauthorized access to sensitive resources or disruption of AWS environment operations.
data_source:
    - ASL AWS CloudTrail
search: |-
    `amazon_security_lake` api.operation=DeleteGroup status=Success
      | fillnull
      | stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime
        BY actor.user.uid api.operation api.service.name
           http_request.user_agent src_endpoint.ip actor.user.account.uid
           cloud.provider cloud.region
      | rename actor.user.uid as user api.operation as action api.service.name as dest http_request.user_agent as user_agent src_endpoint.ip as src actor.user.account.uid as vendor_account cloud.provider as vendor_product cloud.region as vendor_region
      | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
      | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
      | `asl_aws_iam_successful_group_deletion_filter`
how_to_implement: You must install the Data Lake Federated Analytics App and ingest the logs into Splunk.
known_false_positives: This detection will require tuning to provide high fidelity detection capabilties. Tune based on src addresses (corporate offices, VPN terminations) or by groups of users. Not every user with AWS access should have permission to delete groups (least privilege).
references:
    - https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/iam/delete-group.html
    - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/APIReference/API_DeleteGroup.html
tags:
    analytic_story:
        - AWS IAM Privilege Escalation
    asset_type: AWS Account
    mitre_attack_id:
        - T1069.003
        - T1098
    product:
        - Splunk Enterprise
        - Splunk Enterprise Security
        - Splunk Cloud
    security_domain: access
tests:
    - name: True Positive Test
      attack_data:
        - data: https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/splunk/attack_data/master/datasets/attack_techniques/T1098/aws_iam_successful_group_deletion/asl_ocsf_cloudtrail.json
          sourcetype: aws:asl
          source: aws_asl