Malicious Assignment of a Privileged Azure AD Role (via auditlogs)

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 detects an account being added to a privileged Azure AD directory role such as Global Administrator or Privileged Role Administrator, an account-manipulation technique used to escalate and entrench control of a tenant. Privileged role assignment is tracked in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report cloud coverage. Detecting this operation surfaces privilege escalation in the identity plane.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098.003 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Entra Cross-Tenant Access or External User Invitation via Azure Audit (via azure)

Suspicious Delegated Permission Grant to Entra Agent Access Scope via Azure Audit Logs

Suspicious IAM CreateLoginProfile For Root User via AWS AssumeRoot Abuse

Suspicious AWS IAM Privilege Escalation via AttachUserPolicy of Administrator Policy

Suspicious Member Added to Privileged Directory Role in Entra ID

Suspicious High-Privilege Microsoft Graph Application Role Grant via Azure Audit (via azure)

GCP Google Workspace: Application ContextAwareAccess Setting Changed

GitHub Audit: Outside Collaborator Membership and Permission Changes

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

Malicious Assignment of a Privileged Azure AD Role (via auditlogs)

Pivot detection · T1098.003 · 9 related

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

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