🟠CIS AWS 3.3Rule: CIS-AWS-3-3high

S3 bucket access logging on CloudTrail target

Description

S3 bucket access logging enabled on the S3 bucket receiving CloudTrail logs.

⚠️ Risk Impact

Without bucket-access logging, you can't detect when an attacker accesses CloudTrail logs to delete forensic evidence.

🔍 How EchelonGraph Detects This

CIS-AWS-3-3Automated scanner rule

EchelonGraph's Tier 1 Cloud Scanner automatically checks for this condition across all connected AWS accounts. Violations are flagged as high-severity findings with remediation guidance.

🔧 Remediation

aws s3api put-bucket-logging --bucket cloudtrail-bucket --bucket-logging-status TargetBucket=access-logs-bucket.

💀 Real-World Attack Scenario

An attacker with admin access deleted CloudTrail log objects to cover their tracks. Without access logging on the CloudTrail bucket, the deletion itself wasn't recorded. Forensic reconstruction failed.

💰 Cost of Non-Compliance

Lost forensic evidence: 3-5× incident-investigation cost (Mandiant M-Trends 2024).

📋 Audit Questions

  • 1.Access logging on CloudTrail bucket?
  • 2.Access logs in separate account?
  • 3.Retention?

🎯 MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

T1070 — Indicator Removal on Host

⚡ Common Pitfalls

  • No access logging on CloudTrail bucket
  • Access logs in same bucket as CloudTrail
  • No retention policy

📈 Business Value

Access logging on logging buckets prevents log-tampering blind spots.

⏱️ Effort Estimate

Manual

10 minutes per bucket

With EchelonGraph

EchelonGraph monitors logging configuration

🔗 Cross-Framework References

PCI-10.5

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