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Created by Claudiu Tabac - © 2026
This material is open for educational and research use. Commercial use without explicit permission from the author is not allowed.
Authorization Misconfigurations
Critical security vulnerabilities in identity and access management systems
What This Category Represents
Authorization defines who can perform which actions in identity, cloud, and SaaS environments. These misconfigurations represent one of the most critical root causes behind successful cyberattacks, enabling adversaries to escalate privileges, move laterally across networks, and establish persistent footholds.
Authorization failures occur when roles are overly broad, permissions are incorrectly assigned, app roles expose administrative capabilities, service principals operate with excessive privileges, group hierarchies create privilege loops, or authorization frameworks lack regular review cycles.
Top Attack Vectors
  • Privilege escalation
  • Lateral movement
  • Machine identity abuse
  • Multi-cloud compromise
  • Persistent identity footholds
Critical Authorization Failures
Overprivileged Directory Roles
Global Admin, Privileged Role Admin, and Cloud App Admin roles assigned unnecessarily. Legacy administrative roles remain active without justification, lacking minimum-privilege governance frameworks.
Impact: Full identity compromise with a single compromised user account.
Excessive Service Principal Permissions
Machine identities granted Directory.ReadWrite.All, Owner, or Contributor permissions without separation of duties or oversight mechanisms.
Impact: Silent, high-impact escalation paths that evade detection.
Unrestricted Custom Roles
Custom-defined roles with cumulative privilege overflow create unknown attack surfaces that security teams struggle to map and monitor effectively.
Impact: Hidden admin-level escalation exploited by advanced persistent threats.
Application and Group-Based Risks
Misconfigured App Role Assignments
Enterprise applications and OAuth applications configured with admin-equivalent permissions. User-grantable delegated roles bypass security controls and enable privilege expansion through legitimate application interfaces.
Risk Level: Critical OAuth tokens become privilege expansion vectors
Dangerous Group-Based Authorization
Nested groups create circular privilege loops, while overly broad groups like "Everyone" receive sensitive rights. Forgotten administrative groups from legacy migrations remain active and unmonitored in modern environments.
Risk Level: High Single group membership enables full lateral escalation
Segmentation and Review Gaps
No Privileged Access Segmentation
All administrators operate within the same privilege tier without separation between cloud platform, directory, and workload roles. Machine and human identities blend together, eliminating critical security boundaries.
  • Horizontal movement into sensitive admin tiers
  • No isolation between identity types
  • Single breach affects all privilege levels
Incomplete Role Assignment Reviews
Organizations lack periodic certification processes, automated alerts for escalated privileges, and visibility into role drift. Privilege accumulation occurs silently over time without detection or remediation.
  • No governance cadence
  • Invisible privilege creep
  • Attackers exploit abandoned permissions
Direct User Permission Anti-Pattern
Direct Assignment
Permissions assigned directly to individual user accounts instead of through group-based models
Audit Blindness
Hard to audit and track, creating visibility gaps in security operations
Silent Escalation
Attackers escalate privileges silently, bypassing governance controls

Critical Finding: Direct user permissions bypass all group-based governance mechanisms and create invisible escalation paths that security teams cannot effectively monitor or control.
Identity Attack Chain Mapping
Authorization misconfigurations enable multiple stages of sophisticated identity-based attacks, providing adversaries with escalation paths throughout the attack lifecycle.
01
Stage 4: Authentication Abuse
Compromised credentials leverage overprivileged roles to authenticate with elevated permissions
02
Stage 5: Privilege Escalation
Attackers exploit authorization gaps to elevate from standard user to administrative access
03
Stage 7: Identity-Based Lateral Movement
Excessive permissions enable horizontal movement across cloud platforms and directories
04
Stage 8: Persistence via Identity
Overprivileged service principals establish persistent backdoors in identity infrastructure
Identity Breach Patterns Affected
Authorization misconfigurations contribute to multiple documented breach patterns across enterprise environments.
1
BP-021
App Roles → Admin Escalation
Category 3 breach pattern
2
BP-026
OAuth Token → Privilege Expansion
Category 3 breach pattern
3
BP-033
CI/CD Identity Pivot
Category 6 breach pattern
4
BP-034
Machine Identity Privilege Drift
Category 6 breach pattern
5
BP-040
Cross-Cloud Identity Pivot
Category 6 breach pattern
6
BP-046
Conditional Access Bypass
Category 8 breach pattern
Critical Notes for Security Teams
40%
Breach Elimination
Strong authorization governance eliminates over 40% of identity breaches
#1
Enterprise Blind Spot
Overprivileged service principals are the top blind spot in enterprises
Authorization misconfigurations represent the core vulnerability behind privilege escalation attacks. Nested groups frequently produce hidden administrative paths, while overprivileged service principals operate undetected in production environments.
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Created by Claudiu Tabac — © 2026
This framework is open for educational and research use. Commercial use without explicit permission from the author is not allowed.
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