Suspicious MURKY PANDA Mail Permission Grant to Service Principal (via azure)

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
azure
Service
auditlogs
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-12
Updated
2026-09-12

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 an application role assignment being granted to a service principal in Microsoft Entra ID. MURKY PANDA assigned Microsoft Graph mail permissions to compromised service principals to read victim mailboxes over a trusted application identity. Newly granted high-privilege app roles warrant review.

Related detections9 linkedT1098.003 — drag to rearrange
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)
GCP Google Workspace: Application ContextAwareAccess Setting Changed
GitHub Audit: Outside Collaborator Membership and Permission Changes
Suspicious MURKY PANDA Mail Permission Grant to Service Principal (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.