Andy Robbins Profile picture
Dec 6, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Let's talk about tiered administration in AzureAD:

- What it starts with
- How it can be violated
- What you can do about that

In 10 tweets or less. Go:
1/ There are three default admin roles that belong to Tier Zero in AzureAD:

Global Admin
Priv. Role Admin
Priv. Auth Admin

Everything IN tier zero is tier zero. Everything ELSE is not tier zero has has no business controlling anything IN tier zero.
2/ These admin roles aren't of much use if you don't grant them to anyone. Let's grant a service principal the Global Admin role:
3/ If we agree that this service principal needs this role assignment, then this isn't a *violation* of tiered administration -- it is an *expansion* of the definition of tier zero in our environment:
4/ You've expanded the definition of what tier zero is to now include this service principal. Cool.

But what has control of this service principal? For starters, the Cloud App Admin role:
5/ Other things control this SP, too, but let's stay focused on this admin role to illustrate the point.

We've agreed that the SP needs GA and will be part of Tier Zero. We must now also agree that the Cloud App Admin role is a tier zero role, as well:
6/ Why must Cloud App Admin be tier zero? Because the actions allowed by this role are immutable: you cannot change them. ANYONE granted this role can control your tier zero SP now, so this role must now be considered tier zero.
7/ Now let's say we grant the Cloud App Admin role to two users: a tier zero user and a tier one user:
8/ Now we have a tiered administration violation: a tier one user has control of a tier zero object.

See this post for how an attacker can abuse this: posts.specterops.io/azure-privileg…
9/ The "all or nothing" nature of Azure AD admin roles means that the most straight-forward way to deal with this is to revoke the tier one user's Cloud App Admin role assignment
10/ You can start to find these tiered administration violations yourself today with FOSS #BloodHound: github.com/BloodHoundAD/B…

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More from @_wald0

Feb 17, 2023
This week I added 5 new functions to #BARK. A quick thread explaining each one with examples:
Get-ServicePrincipalOwner

List the current owner(s) of a specified #Azure AD Service Principal.

Example:
New-ServicePrincipalOwner

Add a new owner to an AAD Service Principal. Owners can add credentials to SPs and then auth as them.

Example:
Read 8 tweets
Feb 16, 2023
Azure App Service Web Apps are yet another #Azure service that supports managed identity assignments.

Here's how attackers can use #BARK to abuse those assignments: Image
There are at least 3 ways to achieve code execution on an Azure App Service Web App ("Azure Web App" from here on) instance:

1. The Kudu shell execution API endpoints
2. Poison deployment to include a web shell in the app
3. Find a cmd execution vulnerability in the deployed app
We'll focus on #1 - abusing the built-in Kudu shell execution endpoints.

This is the feature the Azure GUI uses as its "Debug Console" and is documented here: github.com/projectkudu/ku…

@kfosaaen discussed this in his August 2020 blog post here: netspi.com/blog/technical… Image
Read 9 tweets
Feb 4, 2023
Interest check: should I continue developing this research? Read my notes here and please let me know if you think this is worth pursuing further.

Problem: attackers have been moving their C2 channels to legitimate services to evade detection, slip through block lists, etc.
Examples:

github.com/boku7/azureOut…
3xpl01tc0d3r.blogspot.com/2020/03/introd…

Defenders and vendors have to play catch-up whenever one of these novel C2 methods becomes popular.
I believe it's possible to proactively, semi-automatically discover these methods in existing and emerging cloud services. We can assess their attractiveness to attackers, vendors can make them less attractive and prioritize their own detection efforts.

How?
Read 15 tweets
Sep 20, 2022
#Azure Managed Identity assignments are "secure by default."

Dangerous attack paths can emerge around these assignments.

Here's those attack paths emerge, how attackers abuse them, and how defenders can eliminate them: 🧵
First we should understand what Managed Identities are. I think the best way is to understand the problem they are designed to solve.

We have a great recent example of this problem from the alleged Uber breach, where a PowerShell script may have been storing plain text creds:
This problem is not new and not surprising to many people:
Read 25 tweets
Sep 13, 2022
Tiered Administration is among the strongest security controls that exist.

But the vast majority of organizations do not use it.

Here is how you can get started using Tiered Administration TODAY in your #Azure environments: 🧵
First, understand the problem we are trying to solve with Tiered Administration:

Tiered Administration protects your most privileged assets from compromise in the event that less privileged assets are compromised.

It's the wombo combo of least privilege and defense in depth.
Do Tiered Administration effectively and you DRAMATICALLY reduce risks posed by ransomware actors, insider threats, etc.

Most efforts get stuck in the very first step: identifying which assets go into which tiers.

Here's how you do this:
Read 11 tweets
Aug 25, 2022
How to prevent Kerberoasting:

Kerberoasting is an incredibly powerful and reliable attack against Active Directory. In some situations it can result in an attacker becoming Domain Admin nearly instantaneously.

Here's how to prevent this attack: 🧵 Image
First we need to identify Active Directory users that are "kerberoastable" - possible targets for the attacker to choose to Kerberoast.

Kerberoast relies on a user having some value in their "serviceprincipalnames" attribute.

Find all of them instantly with no 3rd party tools:
dsquery has been built in to Windows Server since Server 2008. You also get it when installing RSAT.

Here's the command:

dsquery * "dc=contoso,dc=com" -filter "(&(objectcategory=user)(servicePrincipalName=*))" -attr distinguishedName servicePrincipalName
Read 12 tweets

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