⚙️ AWS STS: Hidden Privilege Escalation

Abstract This article dissects the often-misunderstood security implications of AWS Security Token Service (STS) and temporary credentials. While STS is essential for least-privilege cloud architectures, its complexity introduces significant avenues for lateral movement and privilege escalation. We explore how misconfigurations in AssumeRole policies and inadequate monitoring create persistent backdoors, offering technical analysis and mandatory defense strategies for security professionals. High-Retention Hook I learned the hard way that a 15-minute temporary session token can cause permanent damage. During a recent client engagement focused on CI/CD pipeline security, we compromised a non-production service running in Fargate. The resulting AWS temporary key was set to expire quickly, and the DevSecOps team felt safe. However, that token allowed us to immediately execute a high-privilege sts:AssumeRole command, granting us access to the cross-account staging environment. The initial