AWS EventBridge Rule Disabled or Deleted

ELASTIC detection rule by Austin Songer, Elastic · Elastic License v2

Identifies when an Amazon EventBridge rule is disabled or deleted. EventBridge rules are commonly used to automate operational workflows and security-relevant routing (for example, forwarding events to Lambda, SNS/SQS, or security tooling). Disabling or deleting a rule can break critical integrations, suppress detections, and reduce visibility. Adversaries may intentionally impair EventBridge rules to disrupt monitoring, delay response, or hide follow-on actions.

[metadata]
creation_date = "2021/10/17"
integration = ["aws"]
maturity = "production"
updated_date = "2026/08/05"

[rule]
author = ["Austin Songer", "Elastic"]
description = """
Identifies when an Amazon EventBridge rule is disabled or deleted. EventBridge rules are commonly used to automate
operational workflows and security-relevant routing (for example, forwarding events to Lambda, SNS/SQS, or security
tooling). Disabling or deleting a rule can break critical integrations, suppress detections, and reduce visibility.
Adversaries may intentionally impair EventBridge rules to disrupt monitoring, delay response, or hide follow-on actions.
"""
false_positives = [
    """
    EventBridge rules may be disabled or deleted during legitimate maintenance, refactoring, environment teardown, or
    migration to new event patterns/targets. Verify whether the initiating identity, user agent, and source host are
    expected to administer EventBridge and whether the change aligns with an approved change window or deployment.
    """,
]
from = "now-6m"
index = ["filebeat-*", "logs-aws.cloudtrail-*"]
language = "kuery"
license = "Elastic License v2"
name = "AWS EventBridge Rule Disabled or Deleted"
note = """## Triage and analysis

### Investigating AWS EventBridge Rule Disabled or Deleted

EventBridge rules define when events are matched and where they are delivered. Disabling or deleting a rule can interrupt
automation, break alerting pipelines, and create blind spots in detection coverage. In security-focused designs, EventBridge
is frequently used to forward CloudTrail findings, Config/Security Hub events, GuardDuty findings, or application security
signals to downstream responders.

This rule detects successful `DisableRule` or `DeleteRule` actions. Depending on what the affected rule does, this activity
may indicate routine operational work or deliberate impairment of monitoring and response paths.

### Possible investigation steps

**Identify the actor and access path**
- Review `aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.arn` and `aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.access_key_id` to determine which principal performed the change.
- Review `user.name`, `user_agent.original`, and `source.ip` to understand how the action was performed (console vs CLI/SDK/automation) and from where.

**Confirm what changed and what it impacts**
- Use `aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters` to identify the rule name/ARN and whether the action was `DisableRule` or `DeleteRule`.
- Determine what the rule was used for and assess blast radius:
  - Was the rule on a shared event bus or a critical account/region?
  - Was it a centralized “security routing” rule that aggregates events from many accounts?

**Reconstruct timing and sequence**
- Correlate `@timestamp` with surrounding CloudTrail activity for the same actor and the same rule name/ARN.
- Look for companion actions that often occur with impairment attempts:
  - IAM changes that expand permissions (`PutRolePolicy`, `AttachRolePolicy`, `UpdateAssumeRolePolicy`, access key creation).
  - Changes that disable other telemetry or controls (CloudTrail changes, Config recorder stopped, GuardDuty/Security Hub changes).
  - Follow-on actions against sensitive services immediately after the rule was disabled/deleted.

**Validate authorization and change management**
- Check whether the change aligns with a known deployment, infrastructure-as-code run, or approved change ticket. Confirm with the owning team whether the rule was intentionally disabled/deleted and whether there is a documented replacement.

### False positive analysis

- **Planned maintenance and refactoring**
  - Rules may be removed during redesign of event patterns, target migrations, or application decommissioning.
- **Infrastructure-as-code or automation**
  - CI/CD pipelines and IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation/CDK) can disable/delete rules during drift correction or environment rotation.

### Response and remediation

**Restore visibility and business function**
- If the rule is security- or business-critical, restore functionality immediately:
  - Re-enable the rule if it was disabled.
  - If deleted, recreate it from the last known-good baseline (IaC state, templates, or documented configuration).
- Validate delivery by confirming new matching events reach intended targets (for example, downstream Lambda/SNS/SQS) and that monitoring pipelines resume.

**Contain potential compromise**
- If the actor is unexpected or the access path is suspicious:
  - Restrict the principal’s permissions to EventBridge and related services while you investigate (least-privilege containment).
  - Rotate/disable credentials associated with `aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.access_key_id` when applicable.
  - For assumed roles, investigate the originating principal and consider temporarily limiting role assumption via IAM conditions or trust policy changes.

**Scope the incident**
- Pivot in CloudTrail using the same `aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.arn`, access key, and `source.ip` to identify additional EventBridge rule modifications, changes to event buses, permissions, or resource policies that could enable unauthorized routing.
- Determine whether the rule impairment created a monitoring gap and identify the time window of reduced visibility for retrospective review.

**Hardening and prevention**
- Reduce the likelihood of silent impairment:
  - Restrict `events:DisableRule` and `events:DeleteRule` to a small set of administrative roles; use IAM conditions (for example, `aws:PrincipalArn`, `aws:RequestedRegion`, source VPC/IP conditions where appropriate).
  - Consider AWS Organizations SCP guardrails in production accounts to limit destructive EventBridge changes.

### Additional information
- **[AWS IR Playbooks](https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-incident-response-playbooks/blob/c151b0dc091755fffd4d662a8f29e2f6794da52c/playbooks/)** 
- **[AWS Customer Playbook Framework](https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-customer-playbook-framework/tree/a8c7b313636b406a375952ac00b2d68e89a991f2/docs)** 
- **[AWS Knowledge Center – Security Best Practices](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/security-best-practices/)**
"""
references = [
    "https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/APIReference/API_DeleteRule.html",
    "https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/APIReference/API_DisableRule.html",
]
risk_score = 21
rule_id = "87594192-4539-4bc4-8543-23bc3d5bd2b4"
severity = "low"
tags = [
    "Domain: Cloud",
    "Platform: AWS",
    "Data Source: AWS CloudTrail",
    "Service: AWS EventBridge",
    "Tactic: Impact",
    "Rule Type: Custom Query (KQL)",
    "Resources: Investigation Guide",
]
timestamp_override = "event.ingested"
type = "query"

query = '''
data_stream.dataset: aws.cloudtrail 
    and event.provider: events.amazonaws.com 
    and event.action: (DeleteRule or DisableRule) 
    and event.outcome: success
    and not user_agent.original: (*Terraform* or *Pulumi*)
'''


[[rule.threat]]
framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"

[[rule.threat.technique]]
id = "T1489"
name = "Service Stop"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1489/"

[rule.threat.tactic]
id = "TA0040"
name = "Impact"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0040/"

[[rule.threat]]
framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"

[[rule.threat.technique]]
id = "T1562"
name = "Impair Defenses"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/"

[[rule.threat.technique.subtechnique]]
id = "T1562.001"
name = "Disable or Modify Tools"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/001/"

[rule.threat.tactic]
id = "TA0005"
name = "Defense Evasion"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/"
[rule.investigation_fields]
field_names = [
    "@timestamp",
    "user.name",
    "user_agent.original",
    "source.ip",
    "aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.arn",
    "aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.type",
    "aws.cloudtrail.user_identity.access_key_id",
    "event.action",
    "event.outcome",
    "cloud.account.id",
    "cloud.region",
    "aws.cloudtrail.request_parameters",
]

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58aca73c-4e5e-47ae-a425-1f4433577cf8

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Executable code, not a declarative rule

This submission is arbitrary [[ currentRule.format ? currentRule.format.toUpperCase() : '' ]] code, not a declarative detection rule — review it as you would any script before running it, and note that it cannot be safely aggregated or auto-executed alongside YARA/Sigma/Suricata/CRS rules.

Rejected pattern present

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Format & documentation suggestions

Not a security issue — this rule is valid and was accepted as-is. These are optional fields/conventions its own format recommends, mainly affecting its quality score and how well it documents itself for other reviewers.

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