Azure Audit Logs: Admin-initiated App Role Assignments and Privileged Delegated Permissions

Alerts on Azure audit events where an admin grants app roles to a service principal, enabling privileged application access.

FreeReviewedSigma · High · v5

Product: azure
Service: auditlogs
Author: Bailey Bercik '@baileybercik', Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow' (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
Published: 2022-07-28
Updated: 2026-07-31

Analysis Detection

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Priv Esc
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule flags administrator actions granting application permissions by adding an app role assignment to a service principal. Such changes can enable apps to access protected resources with elevated privileges, which attackers may abuse for persistence or privilege escalation. It relies on Azure audit log events containing the specific message text indicating the app role assignment operation.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098.003 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Service Principal Creation via Azure Audit Logs

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Malicious Administrator Policy Attachment for Privilege Escalation in AWS

Suspicious Azure Contributor Role Assignment to Identity

Malicious GCP Service Account Backdoor via serviceAccountTokenCreator Grant

Suspicious GCP Service Account Impersonation via GenerateAccessToken

Malicious Azure Elevate Access to User Access Administrator

Suspicious Azure Policy Definition or Assignment Modification

Suspicious AWS IAM Role Creation With Cross-Account Trust Policy

Azure Audit Logs: Admin-initiated App Role Assignments and Privileged Delegated Permissions

Pivot detection · T1098.003 · 9 related

Changelog

v5
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v4
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v3
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v2
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v1
No changelog recorded for this version.2026-07-30

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

azure-audit-logs-admin-adds-privileged-delegated-or-app-role-permissions-to-serv-5aecf3d5

title: "Azure Audit Logs: Admin-initiated App Role Assignments and Privileged Delegated Permissions"
id: 13e5be45-7dac-4cf7-aa57-335abee186cd
related:
  - id: ba2a7c80-027b-460f-92e2-57d113897dbc
    type: obsolete
  - id: 5aecf3d5-f8a0-48e7-99be-3a759df7358f
    type: derived
status: test
description: This rule flags administrator actions granting application permissions by adding an app role assignment to a service principal. Such changes can enable apps to access protected resources with elevated privileges, which attackers may abuse for persistence or privilege escalation. It relies on Azure audit log events containing the specific message text indicating the app role assignment operation.
references:
  - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/architecture/security-operations-applications#application-granted-highly-privileged-permissions
  - https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/master/rules/cloud/azure/audit_logs/azure_app_privileged_permissions.yml
author: Bailey Bercik '@baileybercik', Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Huntrule Team
date: 2022-07-28
modified: 2023-03-29
tags:
  - attack.persistence
  - attack.privilege-escalation
  - attack.t1098.003
logsource:
  product: azure
  service: auditlogs
detection:
  selection:
    properties.message: Add app role assignment to service principal
  condition: selection
falsepositives:
  - When the permission is legitimately needed for the app
level: high
license: DRL-1.1

Convert

This rule as a query you can run. Uses no unlock credit.

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