Understanding how attackers transform low-level access into administrative control through identity system weaknesses
Understanding Privilege Escalation in Identity Systems
What Happens in Stage 5
Privilege Escalation represents a critical inflection point where attackers transform low-level access into administrative or high-value privilege. Unlike traditional infrastructure-based privilege escalation that exploits software vulnerabilities, identity privilege escalation operates entirely within the security architecture itself.
This stage leverages systemic weaknesses in identity governance and access management. Attackers exploit nested group structures that create invisible privilege inheritance chains, discover stale role assignments that have accumulated over years of organizational changes, and manipulate misconfigured Conditional Access policies that fail to enforce proper privilege boundaries.
The sophistication lies in exploiting identity weaknesses rather than technical exploits. Token manipulation enables privilege inflation through claim modifications, while privilege creep from years of unchecked permission grants creates shadow administrative pathways. Machine identities often carry excessive permissions that attackers can hijack to gain elevated access without triggering traditional security controls.
Attacker Objectives
Discover Hidden Paths
Map invisible admin routes through nested group structures
Escalate via Groups
Leverage nested memberships to inherit elevated privileges
Activate PIM Roles
Exploit misconfigurations in Privileged Identity Management
Bypass Governance
Utilize stale assignments that evade current security policies
Inflate Privileges
Manipulate token claims to artificially elevate access rights
Critical Insight: This is the stage where an attacker transforms from a nuisance into a genuinely dangerous threat actor. The transition from user-level to admin-level access enables all subsequent attack chain stages.
Misconfigurations and Detection Strategies
Critical Misconfigurations
Understanding the specific identity misconfigurations that enable privilege escalation is essential for defensive strategy. These weaknesses represent systemic failures in identity governance and access management that create exploitable privilege pathways.
Nested group structures create invisible privilege inheritance paths that attackers systematically discover before security teams. These hidden pathways enable privilege escalation without triggering standard monitoring alerts.
MC-090: Privilege Creep
Accumulated role assignments over years create shadow administrators with excessive permissions. Old roles remain active long after organizational changes, providing ready-made escalation opportunities.
MC-107: Weak Role Governance
Insufficient auditing and governance around directory roles enables undetected privilege escalation. Lack of regular access reviews allows dangerous permission combinations to persist.
MC-062: Excessive IAM Permissions
Users, applications, and machine identities frequently possess far more access rights than required for their operational functions, violating least privilege principles.
MC-138: Overprivileged Machine Identities
Service principals and managed identities carry hidden administrative capabilities that attackers can hijack to gain elevated access without authenticating as human users.
Detection Logic
Effective detection of privilege escalation requires monitoring identity privilege graph changes, unusual access patterns, and anomalous group membership modifications that indicate escalation attempts.
Privilege Escalation represents the identity tipping point where attackers transition from limited access to dangerous capabilities. This stage bridges initial access and post-exploitation phases.
Once privilege escalation succeeds, attackers gain the capability to move laterally across identity boundaries, establish persistent access mechanisms, and initiate offensive operations against high-value assets. The transformation from low privilege to administrative access enables all subsequent attack stages and represents the point of maximum defensive intervention opportunity.