# AWS - ECS Post Exploitation
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## ECS
For more information check:
{% content-ref url="../aws-services/aws-ecs-enum.md" %}
[aws-ecs-enum.md](../aws-services/aws-ecs-enum.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}
### Host IAM Roles
In ECS an **IAM role can be assigned to the task** running inside the container. **If** the task is run inside an **EC2** instance, the **EC2 instance** will have **another IAM** role attached to it.\
Which means that if you manage to **compromise** an ECS instance you can potentially **obtain the IAM role associated to the ECR and to the EC2 instance**. For more info about how to get those credentials check:
{% embed url="https://book.hacktricks.xyz/pentesting-web/ssrf-server-side-request-forgery/cloud-ssrf" %}
{% hint style="danger" %}
Note that if the EC2 instance is enforcing IMDSv2, [**according to the docs**](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance-metadata-v2-how-it-works.html), the **response of the PUT request** will have a **hop limit of 1**, making impossible to access the EC2 metadata from a container inside the EC2 instance.
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### Privesc to node to steal other containers creds & secrets
But moreover, EC2 uses docker to run ECs tasks, so if you can escape to the node or **access the docker socket**, you can **check** which **other containers** are being run, and even **get inside of them** and **steal their IAM roles** attached.
#### Making containers run in current host
Furthermore, the **EC2 instance role** will usually have enough **permissions** to **update the container instance state** of the EC2 instances being used as nodes inside the cluster. An attacker could modify the **state of an instance to DRAINING**, then ECS will **remove all the tasks from it** and the ones being run as **REPLICA** will be **run in a different instance,** potentially inside the **attackers instance** so he can **steal their IAM roles** and potential sensitive info from inside the container.
```bash
aws ecs update-container-instances-state \
--cluster --status DRAINING --container-instances
```
The same technique can be done by **deregistering the EC2 instance from the cluster**. This is potentially less stealthy but it will **force the tasks to be run in other instances:**
```bash
aws ecs deregister-container-instance \
--cluster --container-instance --force
```
A final technique to force the re-execution of tasks is by indicating ECS that the **task or container was stopped**. There are 3 potential APIs to do this:
```bash
# Needs: ecs:SubmitTaskStateChange
aws ecs submit-task-state-change --cluster \
--status STOPPED --reason "anything" --containers [...]
# Needs: ecs:SubmitContainerStateChange
aws ecs submit-container-state-change ...
# Needs: ecs:SubmitAttachmentStateChanges
aws ecs submit-attachment-state-changes ...
```
### Steal sensitive info from ECR containers
The EC2 instance will probably also have the permission `ecr:GetAuthorizationToken` allowing it to **download images** (you could search for sensitive info in them).
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