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العربيةGrant self EKS cluster-admin through an access entry
Can map itself onto an EKS cluster as Kubernetes cluster-admin, reaching its AWS roles.
Grants escalation only in combination. All of these are needed together:
eks:CreateAccessEntryeks:AssociateAccessPolicyeks:CreateAccessEntry can map itself onto an EKS cluster as Kubernetes cluster-admin, reaching its AWS roles, but only when it is held together with eks:AssociateAccessPolicy. Held together they reach administrator access.
Why it is dangerous
A principal can call eks:CreateAccessEntry to map its own IAM principal onto the cluster, then eks:AssociateAccessPolicy (AmazonEKSClusterAdminPolicy) to become Kubernetes cluster-admin - of a cluster it had no prior access to. Cluster-admin can schedule a pod as any service account, reaching the node-group role, every IRSA role, and every Pod Identity role the cluster fronts.
In MITRE ATT&CK terms this maps to T1098.003, Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Roles, under the privilege escalation tactic. AWS records it in CloudTrail as CreateAccessEntry, AssociateAccessPolicy. The call shows up in CloudTrail but blends into normal administration, so it needs a rule to stand out. It also gives an attacker a way to keep access after the first foothold is closed, so it is worth watching even when it looks like routine administration.
Detection
CreateAccessEntryAssociateAccessPolicyPrerequisites
eks:CreateAccessEntry + eks:AssociateAccessPolicy on a cluster whose authenticationMode is API or API_AND_CONFIG_MAP; reachability to the Kubernetes API endpoint.
Tactic
Privilege Escalation
A control that would remove it: Restrict eks:CreateAccessEntry / eks:AssociateAccessPolicy to a break-glass role; require CONFIG_MAP-only auth on sensitive clusters; alarm on new access entries.
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 eks:CreateAccessEntry allow?
Can map itself onto an EKS cluster as Kubernetes cluster-admin, reaching its AWS roles.
What else is needed for eks:CreateAccessEntry to be dangerous?
It becomes an escalation only when held together with eks:AssociateAccessPolicy. On its own it is not enough, which is what makes the combination easy to miss.
How is grant self EKS cluster-admin through an access entry detected?
Watch for CreateAccessEntry, AssociateAccessPolicy 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: Restrict eks:CreateAccessEntry / eks:AssociateAccessPolicy to a break-glass role; require CONFIG_MAP-only auth on sensitive clusters; alarm on new access entries. 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?
T1098.003, Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Roles, under the privilege escalation tactic.
Related paths
References
Find this in your own account
We run a read-only scan of one AWS account and show you which of these paths exist, ranked by blast radius, with the change that breaks each one. First validated paths within the hour.