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العربيةPass role to MWAA environment
Can pass a role to a new MWAA environment and run Airflow DAG code as it.
Grants escalation only in combination. All of these are needed together:
iam:PassRolemwaa:CreateEnvironmentiam:PassRole can pass a role to a new MWAA environment and run Airflow DAG code as it, but only when it is held together with mwaa:CreateEnvironment. Held together they reach administrator access.
Why it is dangerous
A principal holds iam:PassRole on the target role together with mwaa:CreateEnvironment, so it can stand up a Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow environment with the target role as the execution role and drop a DAG that runs arbitrary Python as the target role. Airflow DAG code is ordinary Python with no sandbox, so this is full run-as-role code execution.
In MITRE ATT&CK terms this maps to T1651, Cloud Administration Command, under the privilege escalation tactic. AWS records it in CloudTrail as CreateEnvironment. The call is loud in CloudTrail and stands out from normal activity.
Detection
CreateEnvironmentPrerequisites
Target role's trust policy must allow airflow-env.amazonaws.com; a VPC with two private subnets and a writable S3 DAG bucket.
MITRE ATT&CK
T1651 · Cloud Administration CommandTactic
Privilege Escalation
A control that would remove it: Remove iam:PassRole for this role or scope it with iam:PassedToService; restrict mwaa:CreateEnvironment.
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 pass a role to a new MWAA environment and run Airflow DAG code as it.
What else is needed for iam:PassRole to be dangerous?
It becomes an escalation only when held together with mwaa:CreateEnvironment. On its own it is not enough, which is what makes the combination easy to miss.
How is pass role to MWAA environment detected?
Watch for CreateEnvironment 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; restrict mwaa:CreateEnvironment. 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?
T1651, Cloud Administration Command, 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.