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Lack of protection against deletion - EC2

Description​

Instances do not have the termination/removal protection option enabled.

Impact​

  • Delete or terminate instances by accident.
  • Lose of EBS data.

Recommendation​

Ensure that instances have Termination Protection safety feature enabled.

Threat​

External attacker with AWS credentials.

Expected Remediation Time​

⌚ 30 minutes.

Score​

Default score using CVSS 3.1. It may change depending on the context of the vulnerability.

Base​

  • Attack vector: N
  • Attack complexity: L
  • Privileges required: H
  • User interaction: N
  • Scope: U
  • Confidentiality: N
  • Integrity: N
  • Availability: H

Temporal​

  • Exploit code madurity: P
  • Remediation level: O
  • Report confidence: C

Result​

  • Vector string: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/E:P/RL:O/RC:C
  • Score:
    • Base: 4.9
    • Temporal: 4.4
  • Severity:
    • Base: Medium
    • Temporal: Medium

Code Examples​

Compliant code​

The resource has correctly configured protection against deletion

Resources:
  MyLaunchTemplate:
    Type: AWS::EC2::LaunchTemplate
    Properties:
      LaunchTemplateName: MyLaunchTemplate
      LaunchTemplateData:
        InstanceType: t2.micro
        KeyName: MyKeyPair
        DisableApiTermination: true

Non compliant code​

The resource does not have any protection against deletion

Resources:
  MyLaunchTemplate:
    Type: AWS::EC2::LaunchTemplate
    Properties:
      LaunchTemplateName: MyLaunchTemplate
      LaunchTemplateData:
        InstanceType: t2.micro
        KeyName: MyKeyPair
        DisableApiTermination: false
resource "aws_launch_template" "foo" {
  name = "foo"
  ...
  cpu_options {
    core_count       = 4
    threads_per_core = 2
  }

  disable_api_termination = false
}

Using the AWS CLI, verify that EC2 has protection against deletion using the following command

$ aws ec2 describe-instance-attribute
      --region us-east-1
      --instance-id {instance_id}
      --attribute disableApiTermination

If the command output returns false, termination protection is not enabled for the selected instance

Requirements​

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