Azure Privilege Escalation via Azure API Permissions Abuse

Microsoft’s Azure is a complicated system of principals, securable objects, and the various ways access is granted to those objects. Some privileged actions are tightly controlled by Azure AD roles, while other actions are controlled by roles and object ownership. Many objects in Azure are subject to distinct permissions systems, which can make effective access auditing very difficult.

In this post, I will explain how one of those permissions systems can be abused to escalate to Global Admin. I’ll explain how you as an attacker can abuse this system, and I will also explain how you as a defender can find, clean up, and prevent these abusable configurations.