How Criminals Breach your Azure Environment by Marco Schmidt & Manu Meyer

In this session we look at how malicious attackers exploit even the slightest misconfigurations in your Azure environment. We go over typical MITRE attack techniques, such as phishing, credential enumeration, brute force password spraying and verification bypass and show how they are applied to Azure.

About Marco:
Marco Schmidt works as a Security Engineer at GrabX Solutions. He helps customers to fortify their Azure environments and avoid common Cybersecurity pitfalls. He has a talent to get a comprehensive understanding of a customers Cybersecurity posture in no time.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marco-schmidt-securityguy/

About Manu:
Manu is an Azure Infrastructure Enthusiast, Speaker and Community Guy at GrabX Solutions. He is a Microsoft MVP and has many years of experience in large enterprise customer projects with a focus on Microsoft technologies. In his spare time, he speaks at conferences and organizes the Azure Zurich User Group (http://azurezurichusergroup.com) and .NET Day Switzerland (https://dotnetday.ch). His interests are in Cloud Architecture & Design, Performance Management, Troubleshooting and Development. He lives at https://www.manuelmeyer.net.

Transcript

1. How Criminals Breach your Azure Environment Marco Schmidt & Manuel Meyer
2. 2 2 whoami - Manu Azure Architect @ GrabX Solutions Leading your way through the Azure Cloud Zurich, Switzerland Organizing community events manuelmeyer.net
3. 3 3 whoami - Marco Security Engineer @ GrabX Solutions Working with customers to protect their cloud environments Bern, Switzerland Like to break things thesecurityguy.ch
4. 4 4 Introduction •Fictional Scenario of Attack Kill Chain in the Cloud •All techniques are valid attack techniques and have been used by threat actors in the past •Scenario has been simplified to fit the session •REMEMBER: With great power comes great responsibility! 💪
5. 5 5
6. 6 6 CONTENT 01 Reconnaissance - Find Passwords 02 Reconnaissance - User Enumeration 03 Initial Access - Password Spray 04 Defense Evasion - Conditional Access Bypass 05 Privilege Escalation - Abusing Dynamic Groups 06 Lateral Movement - Abusing VM Contributor Role
7. 7 7 Attack Kill Chain
8. 8 8 Find Passwords How do Hackers get your Passwords? • Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) • Phishing • Darkweb • Dumpster Diving • Password Attacks • Malware • Etc.
9. 9 9 Find Passwords How can you protect against this? • Use (phishing resistant) MFA • Entra ID Smart Lockout • M365 Defender Suite • User Awareness Training • Most important: Brain.exe
10. 10 10 User Enumeration
11. 11 11 User Enumeration
12. 12 12 User Enumeration
13. 13 13 AADInternals • First Released in 2018 by Security Researcher Dr. Nestory Syynimaa • “The ultimate Azure AD / Microsoft 365 hacking and admin toolkit” • License: Creative Commons
14. 14 14 AADInternals Kill chain roles
16. 16 16 User Enumeration How can you protect against this? • You can’t
17. 17 17 Attack Kill Chain Result: Enumerated existing users
18. 18 18 Password Spray AzureBootCamp2024! AzureBootCamp2024! AzureBootCamp2024! Password: AzureBootCamp2024! Passw0rd123! Winter2011$ AzureBootCamp2024!
19. 19 19 Password Spray • API Endpoint: https://login.microsoft.com/common/oauth/token • API Responses: • AADSTS50034 -> User doesn’t exist • AADSTS50126 -> Invalid password • AADSTS50076 or AADSTS50079 -> MFA response • AADSTS50057 -> Disabled account • AADSTS50055 -> Password expired.
20. 20 20 MSOLSpray • Uses Entra ID Error Codes to find out information about accounts • Can find out if account has MFA enabled without triggering notifications • Can use FireProx to rotate source IPs and avoid detection and lockout • First released in 2020 by Penetration Tester Beau Bullock (MIT).
21. 21 21 MSOLSpray
22. 22 22 Password Spray How can you protect against this? • Make users use strong Passwords • Use Passwordless Authentication.
23. 23 23 Attack Kill Chain Result: Found password for Initial Access
24. 24 24 Conditional Access Bypass
25. 25 25 Conditional Access Bypass • Common Attack Vectors: • Location • Exclusion Group Abuse • Device Platform • MITM Attacks (e.g. with Evilginx) • MFA Bombing • Social Engineering • Etc.
26. 26 26 Conditional Access Bypass • Common Attack Vectors: • Avoid Conditional Access completely by getting access to an excluded user! • Who is typically excluded? • BreakGlass Admins • Lazy Admins • Service Accounts • Complaining Users
27. 27 27 Conditional Access Bypass • Common Attack Vectors: • Location • Exclusion Group Abuse • Device Platform • MITM Attacks (e.g. with Evilginx) • MFA Bombing • Social Engineering • Etc.
28. 28 28
29. 29 29
30. 30 30 Conditional Access Bypass How can you protect against this? • Keep exclusion list as short as possible • Create Block Rules to prevent access in unwanted scenarios • Pay attention to conditions • Use CA gap analyzer workbook
31. 31 31 Attack Kill Chain Result: Bypassed Conditional Access Policies
32. 32 32 Entra ID Guest Accounts – Default Settings
33. 33 33
34. 34 34 Abusing Dynamic Groups • Scenario: • Company has outsourced Azure VM Management to another company • The name of this fictional company is: VMGenius.io • All users are invited as Guest Users.
35. 35 35 Abusing Dynamic Groups Group has Virtual Machine Contributor Role
36. 36 36 Abusing Dynamic Groups Group has Virtual Machine Contributor Role
37. 37 37 Abusing Dynamic Groups
38. 38 38 Abusing Dynamic Groups How can you protect against this? • Don’t allow all users to invite guest accounts • Don’t base dynamic group membership rules on user-controlled attributes • Be aware that even non-user controlled attributes could be changed somehow (e.g. from Entra ID Cloud Sync) • Be careful when designing dynamic group membership rules.
39. 39 39 Attack Kill Chain Result: Escalation to privileged role
40. 40 40 Abusing VM Contributor Role • It is a privileged Role • It can execute Scripts on VM with SYSTEM Privileges • Abusing Examples: • Extract NTLM Hashes from VMs • Install Malware on Systems • Extract Information from File Servers • Elevate Privileges from Cloud-only to onPrem • RL Example: • TA UNC3944 uses Serial Console to deploy remote management software
41. 41 41 Attack Kill Chain
42. 42 42 CONTENT 01 Reconnaissance - Find Passwords 02 Reconnaissance - User Enumeration 03 Initial Access - Password Spray 04 Defense Evasion - Conditional Access Bypass 05 Privilege Escalation - Abusing Dynamic Groups 06 Lateral Movement - Abusing VM Contributor Role
43. 43 43 Conclusion • Be careful when exposing information publicly • Use built-in protection features from Microsoft • Look at configurations from an attackers perspective • Keep an eye on you CA Policies and Dynamic Groups • Don’t be lazy! (at least in Cyber Security J)
44. 44 44 marco@thesecurityguy.ch thesecurityguy.ch blog@manuelmeyer.net manuelmeyer.net Marco Schmidt Manuel Meyer Description Link GitHub of Beau Bullock (Azure Pentesting Tools) https://github.com/dafthack BloodHound data collector for Azure https://github.com/BloodHoundAD/AzureHound MicroBurst Toolkit for Attacking Azure https://github.com/NetSPI/MicroBurst Website of AADInternals https://aadinternals.com Hands-on Azure Pentesting Training https://cloudbreach.io/breachingazure Microsoft Penetration Testing Rules of Engagement https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/pentest-rules-of- engagement VM Contributor Role Abuse RL Example https://www.csoonline.com/article/575297/attacker-uses- the-azure-serial-console-to-gain-access-to-microsoft- vm.html