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العربيةAssume role
Can assume a role and inherit all its permissions.
Grants escalation on its own.
sts:AssumeRoleOn its own, sts:AssumeRole can assume a role and inherit all its permissions. On a wide resource scope that alone reaches administrator access.
Why it is dangerous
A principal can call sts:AssumeRole on the target role because the target role's trust policy admits it, receiving a full set of the target role's temporary credentials. For the duration of that session the principal effectively becomes the target role and wields every permission the target role holds, and since the target role is itself a principal, it can in turn assume further roles, escalating or moving laterally across the account.
In MITRE ATT&CK terms this maps to T1078.004, Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts, under the lateral movement tactic. AWS records it in CloudTrail as AssumeRole. The call shows up in CloudTrail but blends into normal administration, so it needs a rule to stand out.
Detection
AssumeRolePrerequisites
Target role's trust policy must allow the source principal (or its account) to assume it.
MITRE ATT&CK
T1078.004 · Valid Accounts: Cloud AccountsTactic
Lateral Movement
A control that would remove it: Tighten the role trust policy; remove sts:AssumeRole from the principal.
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 sts:AssumeRole allow?
Can assume a role and inherit all its permissions.
Can sts:AssumeRole escalate privileges on its own?
Yes. Held on a broad enough resource it reaches administrator access with no other permission.
How is assume role detected?
Watch for 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: Tighten the role trust policy; remove sts:AssumeRole from the principal. 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?
T1078.004, Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts, under the lateral movement tactic.
Related paths
References
Find this in your own account
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