Azure and Microsoft Entra Security

Azure security spans two related but distinct control planes:

• Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD): tenant identity, users, groups, applications, service principals, directory roles, authentication, and Conditional Access.
• Azure Resource Manager (ARM): management groups, subscriptions, resource groups, resources, Azure RBAC, managed identities, and service-specific control/data planes.

Do not equate an Entra directory role with an Azure resource role. A principal can be weak in one plane and privileged in the other, and many escalation paths cross between them.

Scope and Identity Baseline

Record before testing:

• tenant ID, cloud environment, management groups, subscriptions, and directories in scope
• current user/service principal/managed identity object ID and home tenant
• direct and group-derived Entra directory roles
• Azure role assignments, scope, inheritance, conditions, and deny assignments
• authentication method, token audience, Conditional Access result, and PIM activation state
• test versus production subscriptions and any cross-tenant/B2B context

Start with native CLI context:

az cloud show --output json
az account show --output json
az account list --all --refresh --output json
az account management-group list --no-register --output json
az ad signed-in-user show --output json
az role assignment list --subscription <subscription-id> --all --include-inherited --output json
az role assignment list --subscription <subscription-id> --assignee <user-object-id> --all --include-inherited --include-groups --output json
az role definition list --subscription <subscription-id> --output json

For a service principal, az ad signed-in-user show does not apply; resolve the current client/service-principal object explicitly from the reviewed credential context. --all remains scoped to the selected subscription, and --include-groups depends on Microsoft Graph and can still miss nested or workload-derived paths. Repeat the inventory per tenant, management-group root, and in-scope subscription. Never infer identity only from a display name.

Azure RBAC

An Azure role assignment joins three elements: a security principal, a role definition, and a scope. Scope inheritance runs from management group to subscription to resource group to resource.

Review

• Enumerate direct, group-derived, inherited, eligible, and active assignments separately.
• Expand custom role Actions, NotActions, DataActions, and NotDataActions; the role name is not a reliable summary.
• Inspect assignment conditions/ABAC, deny assignments, management-group inheritance, and cross-tenant principals.
• Identify broad scopes for Owner, Contributor, User Access Administrator, Role Based Access Control Administrator, and custom equivalents.
• Check who can write role assignments, role definitions, policies, locks, deployments, managed identities, credentials, or compute configuration.
• Distinguish ARM control-plane permission from service data-plane permission. Contributor over a resource may still gain its data through code/configuration or a managed identity even without direct data actions.

High-Value Cross-Plane Paths

• Active Microsoft Entra Global Administrator can elevate into Azure by using Microsoft.Authorization/elevateAccess/action to grant User Access Administrator at the root / scope. That root assignment can persist after PIM deactivation until it is explicitly removed.
• Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/write or equivalent role-management authority → grant a stronger role at an allowed scope.
• Ability to modify a VM, VM extension, Function App, App Service, Container App, Automation runbook, deployment script, Logic App, or similar workload → execute in that workload's identity and network context.
• Ability to attach or replace a user-assigned managed identity, together with the host resource write path and Microsoft.ManagedIdentity/userAssignedIdentities/assign/action → inherit its downstream Azure permissions.
• Ability to modify federated identity credentials, app credentials, certificates, or owners → impersonate a service principal/application.
• Ability to read deployment outputs, app settings, runbook variables, storage, snapshots, disks, backups, or diagnostic settings → recover credentials or sensitive data.
• Broad policy/deployment rights at a parent scope → affect many child resources even when individual resource assignments appear narrow.

Model each path using exact principal, action, resource, scope, condition, and resulting effective permission. Check Azure Policy and deny assignments before declaring a theoretical path exploitable.

Privileged Identity Management (PIM)

Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management provides time-based and approval-based activation for privileged access. It can govern Microsoft Entra roles, Azure resource roles, and PIM for Groups.

PIM terminology:

• eligible: the principal must activate before using the role
• active: the principal can use the role without activation
• permanent/time-bound: duration of eligibility or assignment
• activated: a currently active, time-limited instance created from eligibility

What to Test

• Permanent active assignments where eligible/JIT access is expected.
• Permanent eligibility without access reviews, expiration, or a business need.
• Roles that activate without MFA, approval, justification, notification, or a short duration.
• Approvers who can approve themselves indirectly, lack separation of duties, or no longer own the system.
• Group-based eligibility where group ownership/membership can be changed by a lower-privileged principal.
• PIM for Groups on role-bearing groups where a lower-privileged principal can alter ownership, membership, or activation controls.
• PIM settings applied to one privileged role but omitted from a custom/equivalent role.
• Directory-role PIM configured while equivalent Azure resource roles remain permanently active, or vice versa.
• Standing service-principal/workload access. Eligible Azure RBAC via PIM is a user-centric control; service principals and managed identities remain standing or time-bounded active assignments, not user-style eligible activations.
• Activation sessions that remain useful through cached tokens, active sessions, delegated jobs, or downstream credentials after the intended window.
• Audit/alert coverage for assignment, activation, approval, renewal, extension, and role-setting changes.

With sufficient Microsoft Graph read permissions, compare current schedule instances:

az rest --method GET \
  --url 'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/roleManagement/directory/roleEligibilityScheduleInstances?$expand=principal,roleDefinition'

az rest --method GET \
  --url 'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/roleManagement/directory/roleAssignmentScheduleInstances?$expand=principal,roleDefinition'

Those endpoints cover Microsoft Entra role schedules. Follow @odata.nextLink, and record the exact Graph permissions or delegated role used because weak tokens silently under-enumerate. Azure resource-role PIM is exposed through ARM's Microsoft.Authorization role eligibility/assignment schedule resources; keep the two inventories separate:

az rest --method GET \
  --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/<subscription-id>/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleEligibilityScheduleInstances?api-version=2020-10-01&\$filter=atScope()"

az rest --method GET \
  --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/<subscription-id>/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignmentScheduleInstances?api-version=2020-10-01&\$filter=atScope()"

Follow nextLink there as well. For Entra directory-role inventory, reviewed readers commonly need RoleEligibilitySchedule.Read.Directory and RoleAssignmentSchedule.Read.Directory or an equivalent delegated role/application permission set.

Conditional Access and Authentication

Conditional Access is Entra's identity-driven policy engine and is evaluated after first-factor authentication.

Review:

• policies in on/off/report-only state and coverage of users, groups, roles, applications, authentication contexts, and workload identities
• exclusions for break-glass accounts, admins, service accounts, guest users, locations, devices, or applications
• admin and management surfaces not covered by phishing-resistant MFA or appropriate authentication strength
• legacy authentication and non-interactive flows that do not receive the intended policy
• device compliance/join trust, named locations, sign-in/user risk, session lifetime, continuous access evaluation, and token protection where used
• policy gaps caused by nested groups, guest/home tenant behavior, service principals, managed identities, or application-specific grant paths
• whether emergency access exclusions are narrowly scoped, monitored, credential-protected, and exercised

For workload identities, Conditional Access applies only in limited cases: directly targeted tenant-owned single-tenant service principals can be controlled, but managed identities, Microsoft-owned service principals, most third-party SaaS service principals, and multitenant app registrations do not inherit human MFA semantics. Target the enterprise application service-principal object, not just the app registration, and verify the control at token issuance.

Use sign-in logs and the Conditional Access result to distinguish policy non-application from policy failure. Report-only evaluation is evidence of intended future control, not enforcement.

Applications, Service Principals, and Workload Identity

An app registration is the tenant-level application definition; a service principal is the local security principal representing an application instance in a tenant.

Inventory:

• owners of application and service-principal objects, separately
• delegated versus application permissions and admin consent
• client secrets/certificates, expiry, unused/stale credentials, and credential-add rights
• federated identity credentials: issuer, subject, audience, repository/branch/environment claims
• multitenant applications, publisher verification, consent grants, and cross-tenant access settings
• service-principal role assignments in both Entra and Azure
• automation/CI connections and whether test identities can reach production

Keep application-object authority separate from service-principal authority. Application ownership and Application.ReadWrite.* can add owners, client secrets, certificates, or federated credentials on the app object; service-principal ownership and ServicePrincipal.ReadWrite.* govern the enterprise application instance. Admin consent is a separate control plane from credential management. Also trace group ownership/membership where a role-bearing group grants app, vault, Azure RBAC, or Entra role access. A secret's metadata proves age/expiry but not that its value is retrievable.

Managed Identities

Managed identities remove stored credentials but still carry authority:

• system-assigned: lifecycle is tied to one Azure resource
• user-assigned: independent resource assignable to multiple workloads

Enumerate identity attachments and downstream role assignments. Check who can attach/detach the identity, execute or deploy code in the host workload, access its metadata/token endpoint, or reuse a user-assigned identity across environments. Treat workload control as potential identity control.

Storage and SAS

A Shared Access Signature (SAS) delegates access to Azure Storage through a signed URI. Review:

• SAS type: user delegation, service, or account SAS
• services/resource types, permissions, start/expiry, protocol, IP restriction, and stored access policy
• long-lived tokens in source, CI logs, tickets, browser history, application settings, or public URLs
• account-key use, listKeys authority, and key-rotation feasibility
• public container/blob access, anonymous listing, network rules, private endpoints, and trusted-service exceptions
• storage RBAC and whether principals can generate user-delegation keys or list account keys

Microsoft recommends a user delegation SAS where supported because it is secured with Entra credentials rather than the account key. User delegation keys and SAS values are time-limited and user-scoped; service/account SAS values derive from account keys, and only service SAS can bind to stored access policies. User delegation SAS is limited to Blob/Data Lake and has a maximum seven-day validity per delegation key. A SAS is a bearer credential; possession can be sufficient even when the holder has no visible Azure role assignment.

Validate each token against its signed permission/resource/time restrictions. Do not treat a redacted or expired SAS found in code as current unauthorized access.

Key Vault, Secrets, and Certificates

• Determine whether the vault uses Azure RBAC or legacy access policies. The active model is controlled by enableRbacAuthorization; RBAC mode invalidates access-policy evaluation for data-plane access.
• Enumerate who can read secrets, keys, and certificates; who can change access; and who controls workloads with vault-reading identities.
• Review public network access, firewall/private endpoints, soft delete, purge protection, logging, secret expiry, and rotation.
• Distinguish key operations (sign/decrypt/wrap) from key export and secret-value read.
• Look for vault references copied into app settings without corresponding identity isolation.
• Test backup/restore and cross-subscription permissions where in scope.

Legacy access-policy write authority on the vault resource can still become self-granting in access-policy mode. In RBAC mode, the equivalent finding depends on DataActions or role-assignment control, not on legacy access-policy mutation.

Credential-Equivalent Actions

Treat the following as credential-equivalent or near-equivalent authority when the downstream scope matches:

Compute, Network, and Data Services

• VM extensions, Run Command, serial console, disks/snapshots, images, custom script, and boot diagnostics
• App Service/Functions deployment slots, publishing credentials, SCM/Kudu, app settings, storage mounts, and managed identities
• AKS control plane/RBAC, workload identity federation, kubeconfig retrieval, node/resource-group rights, and private API reachability
• Container Apps/ACI environment variables, registries, identities, revisions, and exec surfaces
• Automation accounts/runbooks, Logic Apps/connectors, Data Factory linked services, deployment scripts, and DevOps/service connections
• NSGs, route tables, public IPs, load balancers, private endpoints, DNS, peering, Bastion, firewalls, and JIT VM access
• SQL, Cosmos DB, Storage, Service Bus, Event Hubs, and other service-specific data-plane authorization

Map whether a principal that lacks direct data access can reconfigure networking, identity, code, diagnostics, export, backup, or deployment to gain an equivalent capability.

Testing Methodology

1. Establish context — tenant, subscription, cloud, principal, token audience, and active PIM state.
2. Inventory both role planes — Entra directory roles and Azure resource roles with groups, scope, inheritance, conditions, eligible/active state, and custom definitions.
3. Map identity objects — applications, service principals, managed identities, owners, credentials, federation, and consent.
4. Review policy gates — Conditional Access, authentication methods, PIM settings, Azure Policy, deny assignments, and network restrictions.
5. Enumerate workloads/data — identify where control-plane modification yields code execution, identity use, secrets, backups, or data-plane access.
6. Build effective-access paths — principal → permission → resource change/identity → downstream privilege or data.
7. Cross-check logs — Entra sign-in/audit, PIM, Azure Activity, resource logs, and Defender/Sentinel alerts where available.
8. Re-evaluate boundaries — guest/home tenant, management-group inheritance, test/production, group ownership, and workload identities.

Validation

For each finding, include:

1. tenant/subscription and exact principal/object IDs
2. assignment source, role definition, scope, inheritance, condition, and PIM state
3. relevant Conditional Access/authentication result
4. exact Azure/Graph action and target resource
5. effective permission or cross-plane path demonstrated
6. policy, deny, network, licensing, or configuration prerequisites
7. audit/sign-in/activity evidence and remediation at the correct control plane

Common False Positives

• Role name appears privileged but custom Actions/DataActions, conditions, scope, or deny assignments block the claimed action.
• Contributor is reported as able to assign roles without roleAssignments/write or an alternate workload/identity path.
• An eligible PIM assignment is described as standing active access.
• A Conditional Access policy exists but is report-only, excluded, or does not apply to the tested principal/application.
• An app registration is confused with its service principal in another tenant.
• A managed identity is present but the tester cannot control its host or obtain a token in the relevant context.
• An expired/revoked SAS or credential metadata is reported as usable access.
• ARM access is assumed to grant service data-plane access automatically.

Tooling

Azure CLI and Microsoft Graph

Use the official Azure CLI for resource context and az rest for reviewed ARM/Graph queries not exposed cleanly by a command group. Record CLI/API versions and requested permissions. Broad directory inventory often requires Microsoft Graph application permissions and admin consent; absence of results under a weak token is not proof that objects do not exist.

Prowler (Conditional)

Prowler provides maintained Azure configuration/compliance checks. Install a reviewed pinned release in an isolated environment:

python -m pip install 'prowler==<reviewed-version>'
prowler azure --az-cli-auth --subscription-ids <subscription-id>

Other documented modes include service-principal, browser, and managed-identity authentication. Use a dedicated read-only audit principal with only the documented tenant/subscription permissions. Scope subscription IDs explicitly, protect reports as sensitive asset/identity inventories, account for API volume/throttling, and do not enable cloud upload for assessment data unless approved. Prowler findings are configuration leads; trace effective principal/action/resource paths before treating them as exploitable.

Summary

Azure security is an identity-and-scope graph across Entra and ARM. Test directory roles, Azure RBAC, PIM, Conditional Access, service principals, managed identities, delegated storage access, workload control, and service data planes as one system while preserving the distinction between each control plane.