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العربيةPass role to SageMaker
Can create a SageMaker notebook with a role and run a terminal as it.
Grants escalation only in combination. All of these are needed together:
iam:PassRolesagemaker:CreateNotebookInstanceiam:PassRole can create a SageMaker notebook with a role and run a terminal as it, but only when it is held together with sagemaker:CreateNotebookInstance. Held together they reach administrator access.
Why it is dangerous
A principal holds iam:PassRole on the target role plus sagemaker:CreateNotebookInstance, so it can create a managed Jupyter notebook instance assigned the target role and open a terminal in it that runs with the target role's permissions (and exposes the target role's credentials via the notebook's metadata). Because the target role trusts sagemaker.amazonaws.com the pass is accepted; the privileged role is full privilege escalation.
In MITRE ATT&CK terms this maps to T1648, Serverless Execution, under the privilege escalation tactic. AWS records it in CloudTrail as CreateNotebookInstance, CreatePresignedNotebookInstanceUrl. The call shows up in CloudTrail but blends into normal administration, so it needs a rule to stand out.
Detection
CreateNotebookInstanceCreatePresignedNotebookInstanceUrlPrerequisites
Target role's trust policy must allow sagemaker.amazonaws.com.
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 create a SageMaker notebook with a role and run a terminal as it.
What else is needed for iam:PassRole to be dangerous?
It becomes an escalation only when held together with sagemaker:CreateNotebookInstance. On its own it is not enough, which is what makes the combination easy to miss.
How is pass role to SageMaker detected?
Watch for CreateNotebookInstance, CreatePresignedNotebookInstanceUrl 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 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.