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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

free trial

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