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

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Priv Esc
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Defense Evasion
- T1550Use Alternate Authentication Material
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1550Use Alternate Authentication Material
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the assignment of high-privilege Microsoft Graph application roles such as AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All, Directory.ReadWrite.All, or RoleManagement.ReadWrite.Directory to a service principal, an escalation path into Azure highlighted by Red Canary. Granting these permissions lets an app rewrite directory roles and grant itself further access, making it a powerful and stealthy persistence mechanism that should be tightly controlled.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098.003 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Azure Policy Definition or Assignment Modification

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

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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