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العربيةPass role to EMR Serverless
Can run an EMR Serverless Spark job with a role and run code as it.
Grants escalation only in combination. All of these are needed together:
iam:PassRoleemr-serverless:CreateApplicationemr-serverless:StartJobRuniam:PassRole can run an EMR Serverless Spark job with a role and run code as it, but only when it is held together with emr-serverless:CreateApplication, emr-serverless:StartJobRun. Held together they reach administrator access.
Why it is dangerous
A principal holds iam:PassRole on the target role plus emr-serverless:CreateApplication and emr-serverless:StartJobRun, so it can create an EMR Serverless Spark application and start a job run with the target role as the execution role and attacker-controlled job code, the Spark code runs with the target role's permissions and reads the target role's credentials. Because the target role trusts emr-serverless.amazonaws.com the pass is accepted; if the target role is privileged this is full privilege escalation, fully serverless (no EC2 to manage).
In MITRE ATT&CK terms this maps to T1648, Serverless Execution, under the privilege escalation tactic. AWS records it in CloudTrail as CreateApplication, StartJobRun. The call is loud in CloudTrail and stands out from normal activity.
Detection
CreateApplicationStartJobRunPrerequisites
Target role's trust policy must allow emr-serverless.amazonaws.com; an S3 bucket for the job script/logs.
MITRE ATT&CK
T1648 · Serverless ExecutionTactic
Privilege Escalation
A control that would remove it: Remove iam:PassRole for this role or scope it with iam:PassedToService.
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 run an EMR Serverless Spark job with a role and run code as it.
What else is needed for iam:PassRole to be dangerous?
It becomes an escalation only when held together with emr-serverless:CreateApplication, emr-serverless:StartJobRun. On its own it is not enough, which is what makes the combination easy to miss.
How is pass role to EMR Serverless detected?
Watch for CreateApplication, StartJobRun in CloudTrail. The call is loud in CloudTrail and stands out from normal activity.
How do you break this path?
A control that would remove it is: Remove iam:PassRole for this role or scope it with iam:PassedToService. 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?
T1648, Serverless Execution, 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.