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العربيةBind role to Cognito Identity Pool
Can bind a role to a Cognito Identity Pool and redeem its credentials.
Grants escalation only in combination. All of these are needed together:
iam:PassRolecognito-identity:SetIdentityPoolRolesiam:PassRole can bind a role to a Cognito Identity Pool and redeem its credentials, but only when it is held together with cognito-identity:SetIdentityPoolRoles. Held together they reach administrator access.
Why it is dangerous
A principal holds iam:PassRole on the target role plus cognito-identity:SetIdentityPoolRoles, so it can bind the target role as a Cognito Identity Pool's (unauthenticated) role and then redeem temporary credentials for the target role via GetId + GetCredentialsForIdentity. Because the target role trusts cognito-identity.amazonaws.com (AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity) the binding is accepted; if the target role is privileged this is full privilege escalation, reachable even by an anonymous caller.
In MITRE ATT&CK terms this maps to T1078.004, Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts, under the privilege escalation tactic. AWS records it in CloudTrail as SetIdentityPoolRoles, GetCredentialsForIdentity. The call shows up in CloudTrail but blends into normal administration, so it needs a rule to stand out.
Detection
SetIdentityPoolRolesGetCredentialsForIdentityPrerequisites
Target role's trust policy must allow cognito-identity.amazonaws.com via sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity; an existing identity pool (unauthenticated access enabled for the anonymous path).
MITRE ATT&CK
T1078.004 · Valid Accounts: Cloud AccountsTactic
Privilege Escalation
A control that would remove it: Remove iam:PassRole / cognito-identity:SetIdentityPoolRoles; scope identity-pool roles and disable unauthenticated access.
Whether to apply it depends on how the permission is used in your environment, so it is a business decision rather than an automatic fix. The same permission can be load-bearing in one account and pure risk in another.
Pathbreak confirms whether this path resolves in your account, ranks it against the others by how much it opens up, and uses your threat model and business context to show which paths are worth cutting.
Questions
What does iam:PassRole allow?
Can bind a role to a Cognito Identity Pool and redeem its credentials.
What else is needed for iam:PassRole to be dangerous?
It becomes an escalation only when held together with cognito-identity:SetIdentityPoolRoles. On its own it is not enough, which is what makes the combination easy to miss.
How is bind role to Cognito Identity Pool detected?
Watch for SetIdentityPoolRoles, GetCredentialsForIdentity in CloudTrail. The call shows up in CloudTrail but blends into normal administration, so it needs a rule to stand out.
How do you break this path?
A control that would remove it is: Remove iam:PassRole / cognito-identity:SetIdentityPoolRoles; scope identity-pool roles and disable unauthenticated access. Whether to apply it depends on how the permission is used in your account, so it is a business decision rather than an automatic fix.
Which MITRE ATT&CK technique is this?
T1078.004, Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts, under the privilege escalation tactic.
Related paths
References
Find this in your own account
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