Sigma rule: Potential Malicious Usage of CloudTrail System Manager

A detection rule from the SigmaHQ repository, shown as its author published it. Dataset version ref-1f62bd0a5397, updated 2025-12-08T00:00:00.000Z.

Rule

Title
Potential Malicious Usage of CloudTrail System Manager
Status
test
Level
high
Author
jamesc-grafana
Date
2024-07-11
Modified
2025-12-08
File
rules/cloud/aws/cloudtrail/aws_cloudtrail_ssm_malicious_usage.yml
Commit
ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detect when System Manager successfully executes commands against an instance.

Log source

product
aws
service
cloudtrail

Detection

selection_event:
    eventName: 'SendCommand'
    eventSource: 'ssm.amazonaws.com'
selection_status_success:
    errorCode: 'Success'
selection_status_null:
    errorCode: null
condition: selection_event and 1 of selection_status_*

False positives (as the rule lists them)

  • There are legitimate uses of SSM to send commands to EC2 instances
  • Legitimate users may have to use SSM to perform actions against machines in the Cloud to update or maintain them

Tags

  • attack.privilege-escalation
  • attack.initial-access
  • attack.t1566
  • attack.t1566.002

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

References

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules/cloud/aws/cloudtrail/aws_cloudtrail_ssm_malicious_usage.yml

Sources and licences

  • SigmaHQ

    "Potential Malicious Usage of CloudTrail System Manager" by jamesc-grafana (SigmaHQ). Rule: https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules/cloud/aws/cloudtrail/aws_cloudtrail_ssm_malicious_usage.yml.
    Licensed under the Detection Rule License (DRL) 1.1: https://github.com/SigmaHQ/Detection-Rule-License

    Detection Rule License (DRL) 1.1

Cite this page

Dragons Eye Ransomware Tracker, "Sigma rule: Potential Malicious Usage of CloudTrail System Manager",
entity page, dataset version ref-1f62bd0a5397, updated 2025-12-08T00:00:00.000Z,
https://ransomware-tracker.com/detections/sigma/38e7f511-3f74-41d4-836e-f57dfa18eead (accessed 2026-11-03).
Underlying source: SigmaHQ rule 38e7f511-3f74-41d4-836e-f57dfa18eead, commit ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84.

Pages change. The dataset version identifies the data, but no archive of old versions is kept, so this citation cannot be replayed later.