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The Register: Microsoft squashes Azure privilege-escalation bug

On November 23, 2021, NetSPI Director Karl Fosaaen was featured in an article written by Iain Thomson for The Register. Read the full article below or online here.

Microsoft has fixed a flaw in Azure that, according to the infosec firm that found and privately reported the issue, could be exploited by a rogue user within an Azure Active Directory instance “to escalate up to a Contributor role.”

“If access to the Azure Contributor role is achieved, the user would be able to create, manage, and delete all types of resources in the affected Azure subscription,” NetSPI said of the vulnerability, labeled CVE-2021-42306.

Essentially, an employee at a company using Azure Active Directory, for instance, could end up exploiting this bug to ruin an IT department or CISO’s month. Microsoft said last week it fixed the problem within Azure:

Some Microsoft services incorrectly stored private key data in the (keyCredentials) property while creating applications on behalf of their customers.

We have conducted an investigation and have found no evidence of malicious access to this data.

Microsoft Azure services affected by this issue have mitigated by preventing storage of clear text private key information in the keyCredentials property, and Azure AD has mitigated by preventing reading of clear text private key data that was previously added by any user or service in the UI or APIs.

“The discovery of this vulnerability,” said NetSPI’s Karl Fosaaen, who found the security hole, “highlights the importance of the shared responsibility model among cloud providers and customers. It’s vital for the security community to put the world’s most prominent technologies to the test.”

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