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العربيةCreate account and assume admin
Can create a member account and assume its default admin role.
Grants escalation only in combination. All of these are needed together:
organizations:CreateAccountsts:AssumeRoleorganizations:CreateAccount can create a member account and assume its default admin role, but only when it is held together with sts:AssumeRole. Held together they reach a standing way back in.
Why it is dangerous
A principal can call organizations:CreateAccount to spin up a fresh member account whose default OrganizationAccountAccessRole trusts the management account, then assume into it as admin - durable, low-visibility persistence.
In MITRE ATT&CK terms this maps to T1136.003, Create Account: Cloud Account, under the persistence tactic. AWS records it in CloudTrail as CreateAccountResult, AssumeRole. 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
CreateAccountResultAssumeRolePrerequisites
organizations:CreateAccount + sts:AssumeRole from the management account.
MITRE ATT&CK
T1136.003 · Create Account: Cloud AccountTactic
Persistence
A control that would remove it: Restrict organizations:CreateAccount to a break-glass role; alarm on new account creation.
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 organizations:CreateAccount allow?
Can create a member account and assume its default admin role.
What else is needed for organizations:CreateAccount to be dangerous?
It becomes an escalation only when held together with sts:AssumeRole. On its own it is not enough, which is what makes the combination easy to miss.
How is create account and assume admin detected?
Watch for CreateAccountResult, AssumeRole 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 organizations:CreateAccount to a break-glass role; alarm on new account creation. 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?
T1136.003, Create Account: Cloud Account, under the persistence tactic.
Related paths
References
Find this in your own account
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