If an EC2 instance has admin access, it means that a user with excessive privileges can potentially gain unauthorized access and compromise the system. This may lead to data theft or the manipulation of important configurations. It is important to ensure that EC2 instances are not granted unnecessary privileges to minimize the risk of security breaches.
If an EC2 instance has admin access, it means that an IAM role attached to the EC2 instance has full administrative privileges to access AWS services. This can lead to serious security issues, so it is recommended to follow the steps below to remediate this issue:
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/
3. Revoke the administrative privileges by removing the attached IAM policy that grants full access. Instead, attach an IAM policy with the minimum required permissions for the instance to function properly.
4. Once the IAM policy is updated, confirm that the EC2 instance can still function as expected by performing a validation test.
5. Monitor the IAM policies regularly to ensure that no IAM policies with full access are attached to EC2 instances.
It is also recommended to follow the principle of least privilege when assigning IAM roles and policies to instances, which involves giving each IAM role or policy the minimum required permissions to perform its intended function. This can help prevent future instances of granting full administrative access to an EC2 instance.
