Suspicious Azure Policy Definition or Assignment Modification

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
azure
Service
activitylogs
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-14
Updated
2026-09-14

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Defense Evasion

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects Azure Activity Log write operations against policy set definitions or policy assignments which an identity holding the Resource Policy Contributor role can abuse to modify a shared policy and inherit elevated service principal permissions across all its assignments for privilege escalation.

Related detections9 linkedT1098.003 — drag to rearrange
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Malicious Assignment of a Privileged Azure AD Role (via auditlogs)
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)
Suspicious Azure Policy Definition or Assignment Modification
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.