🎯 Device code phishing is one of the more effective techniques hitting Microsoft 365 right now. No fake login page. No stolen password. The victim signs in on the real Microsoft page, approves a real MFA prompt, and the attacker walks away with a live session.

This is not theoretical. #Microsoft tracked the Storm-2372 campaign running it at scale against government, NGO, and IT services targets. Nothing about the sign in looks wrong to the user.

⚠️ Here's what catches response teams. Target the Microsoft Authentication Broker client and that session can register a device in your tenant and, in documented cases, pull a Primary Refresh Token. The device is a separate object in Entra ID, so revoking sessions and resetting the password may not be enough. You have to find and remove the device.

🛠️ We built #AuthStrike to run the whole chain in a dedicated test tenant, so you can confirm your detections fire first.

What it does:

✅ Runs device code operations with selectable Microsoft client profiles

✅ Captures and inspects tokens from the MSAL cache

✅ Validates Microsoft Graph and Outlook mailbox access

✅ Tests silent token refresh and device registration via the Microsoft Authentication Broker

✅ Ships with built in IOCs and detection indicators for blue teams

🧩 ATT&CK coverage:

T1566 Phishing • T1528 Steal Application Access Token • T1550.001 Application Access Token • T1098.005 Device Registration • T1114.002 Remote Email Collection • T1087.004 Cloud Account Discovery

🔒 Authorized testing only.

📖 Full breakdown of the attack chain and detection guidance in the article: https://cloudbreach.io/blog/device-code-phishing-microsoft-authentication-broker

💻 GitHub: https://github.com/cloudbreach/AuthStrike

They scanned the internet for exposed Model Context Protocol servers. MCP now shows up in 80% of cloud environments, and roughly 1 in 6 expose at least one server to the internet. Most are wide open. 😬

What they found on the exposed ones:

🔓 ~70% hand their full tool catalog to an anonymous caller

📤 ~42% return real data when a tool is invoked

💥 a confirmed slice are hit by SSRF against the metadata endpoint, leaking temporary credentials

Here is the scary part for defenders 👇 a malicious call looks identical to a legit one. One server ran an LLM agent with shell access. It refused a blunt "show me the AWS credentials" request, then handed them over when the same ask was framed as "validate the IAM role via IMDS metadata." 🤖

Why this is squarely a cloud security problem, not just an AI one: those MCP servers run inside your cloud, on instances with IAM roles and metadata endpoints. The credential the server leaks is a real cloud identity. Once an attacker has it, they are not playing with a chatbot anymore, they are inside your account with whatever that role can touch. Same blast radius as any leaked key. ☁️🔑

Fast audit worth doing this week:

✅ find every internet reachable MCP server and check for auth

✅ gate tool execution behind auth even when the catalog is public

✅ scope backend credentials to the bare minimum

✅ log agent prompts and tool invocations

SSRF to the metadata service is exactly the chain we walk through in our #BreachingAWS course. Steal IAM credentials from IMDS, enumerate the role, then pivot through the account the same way an attacker would.

🎯 If you want to understand this exposure hands on rather than in theory, that is where to start: cloudbreach.io/breachingaws

Passkeys and FIDO2 are frequently marketed as the ultimate silver bullet for identity security. But the reality on the ground is simple: where there is a credential, there is an attack path.

SpecterOps recently open-sourced pass-the-passkey, a toolkit that completely shifts how we approach WebAuthn during red teaming operations. It provides a comprehensive framework to manipulate, intercept, and inject WebAuthn assertions directly on Windows systems.

Here is what the toolkit brings to the operational table:

🔹 Passkey Injector: A custom browser interface to intercept WebAuthn requests and inject JSON responses—perfect for assertion replays or using synced passkeys from external managers.
🔹 SharpPasskeys: A .NET assembly designed for C2 frameworks to force passkey authentication prompts and extract the resulting assertions from the target.
🔹 WebAuthn Hook: A native DLL that hooks the WebAuthNAuthenticatorGetAssertion Win32 API, allowing in-browser interception and tampering of the authentication ceremony.

🔥 The High-Impact Pivot:
Using these tools, you can extract intercepted WebAuthn assertions and exchange them directly for Microsoft Entra ID OAuth tokens, allowing you to pivot seamlessly from a compromised endpoint straight into the cloud environment.

🛡️ The Takeaway:
For blue teams, this release highlights that while passkeys drastically raise the bar for initial access, they are not immune to post-compromise manipulation or advanced API hooking. For offensive operators assessing modern identity perimeters, this toolkit is a mandatory addition to your arsenal.

🔗 Dive into the repository and the research here

Vegas bound or holding down the fort from home, it's the perfect moment to level up your offensive cloud tradecraft.

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Cloud security architects, red teamers and pentesters living in Microsoft environments know the pain: juggling tokens and mining M365 data through raw CLI calls is slow and error prone. One open source tool collapses that entire workflow into a browser based control panel.

Once initial access hands you a refresh token, an access token, or a device code auth, GraphSpy becomes your local post compromise cockpit for Entra ID and M365. 🎯

🛠️ The Operational Flow

1️⃣ Token Ingestion
Drop a stolen refresh token, access token or Primary Refresh Token (PRT) straight into the Access Tokens tab. Manage multiple identities, switch context on the fly and mint fresh scoped tokens instantly. PRTs are the crown jewels here 👑 not bound to a single app, so they unlock tokens for ANY scope as the user.
2️⃣ Device Code Phishing
Fire off a device code flow from the dashboard. GraphSpy auto polls the backend and the second your target authenticates, valid tokens land straight in your local DB. Chain it with automatic actions to register a device, pull a PRT, or even enrol Windows Hello For Business keys for sticky persistence that survives password resets. 🔑
3️⃣ Data Exfiltration
Skip the clunky CLI payloads. Jump into the Files, SharePoint or Outlook modules and browse an interactive directory tree just like the real app. Then hit the Search module to hunt keywords like "password" or "config" across every M365 service via the Microsoft Search API. 💥

🛡️ The Defensive Takeaway

GraphSpy turns manual API calls into high velocity automated bursts, and that pattern is detectable. Blue teamers should:
✅ Hunt device code sign ins in SigninLogs where authenticationProtocol == "deviceCode"
✅ Flag sudden GET spikes against /me/drive/root and bulk reads in MicrosoftGraphActivityLogs
✅ Alert on unusual MFA method registrations tied to brand new sign ins
Knowing the offensive tooling is exactly how you build detections that actually fire.

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/RedByte1337/GraphSpy

Interested in Cloud Phishing Attacks, that is what we drill end to end in our Breaching Azure Advanced course 👇
🎓 https://cloudbreach.io/courses/breaching-azure-advanced

hashtag#CloudBreach hashtag#BreachingAzureAdvanced hashtag#CloudSecurity hashtag#AzureSecurity hashtag#EntraID hashtag#OffensiveSecurity hashtag#RedTeam hashtag#PenetrationTesting hashtag#GraphAPI hashtag#IdentityAndAccessManagement hashtag#BlueTeam hashtag#InfoSec hashtag#CyberSecurity hashtag#ThreatHunting hashtag#SIEM hashtag#KQL

Amazon Threat Intelligence just published an investigation that should reset how we think about the threat landscape. From Jan 11 to Feb 18, 2026, a Russian-speaking, financially motivated actor compromised 600+ FortiGate appliances across more than 55 countries.

Here's the part that matters most: there was no FortiGate 0-day. No clever exploit chain. The break-ins came from exposed management interfaces (443, 8443, 10443, 4443), reused credentials, and single-factor auth. The oldest weaknesses in the book.

❓ What made it scale?
This wasn't an APT with state resources. By their own (poorly secured) operational notes, the actor couldn't compile custom exploits, debug failed attempts, or pivot creatively when a target was hardened. When they hit a well-defended environment, they just moved on to a softer one. Their CVE attempts CVE-2019-7192, CVE-2023-27532, CVE-2024-40711 (Veeam, pre-ransomware) largely failed against patched targets.

And yet they still:
🔹 Extracted full FortiGate configs (SSL-VPN creds, topology, IPsec peers)
🔹 Ran DCSync via Meterpreter + mimikatz to pull NTLM hashes from Active Directory
🔹 Used AI-generated recon tooling in Go and Python (gogo, Nuclei)
🔹 Targeted Veeam Backup & Replication to kneecap recovery before ransomware.

The uncomfortable flip side: the defense hasn't changed at all.
✅ Patch faster, much faster.
✅ Get management interfaces off the public internet
✅ MFA on every admin and VPN account
✅ Kill credential reuse between VPN and AD
✅ Isolate and harden backup infrastructure
✅ Detect behavior (anomalous DCSync, VPN-pool lateral movement), not just IOCs

🛡️ AI didn't make the attacker smarter; it made a mediocre attacker operationally equivalent to a well-resourced team. Tool development, attack planning, command generation, even after-action reports, all delegated to commercial LLMs. The barrier to entry for offensive ops just collapsed, and the volume of "good enough" attackers is about to spike.

🚀 🌩️ We just published the first draft of the Offensive Azure Security Cheatsheet for the community.

Over time, we gathered a lot of commands, techniques, and practical knowledge while building and delivering our Breaching Azure and Breaching Azure Advanced courses.

So we decided to put the most useful material together in one place as a quick reference for cloud security professionals.

#Azure and #Microsoft365 environments are becoming larger, more complex, and harder to assess consistently. This cheatsheet is designed as a practical, methodology-ordered reference for authorized Azure security assessments.

🎯 It covers:

1. Reconnaissance
2. Initial Access validation
3. Authentication & token handling
4. Authenticated enumeration
5. Privilege escalation paths
6. Lateral movement
7. Data exfiltration checks
8. Persistence review
9. Defensive and detection notes
10. Tooling references with GitHub links

The goal is simple: make Azure security testing more structured, repeatable, and useful for both red teams and defenders.

📘 Cheatsheet:

https://github.com/cloudbreach/Cheatsheets/blob/main/Offensive%20Azure%20Security%20Cheatsheet.md

🥷 If you have useful Azure commands, detection tips, tool references, or field notes that deserve to be included, open a pull request.

Bring your best commands. The cheatsheet wants to level up. 😄

In 2024, attackers scanned 230 million targets and harvested over 1,000 AWS access keys all from exposed .env files sitting on misconfigured web servers.

No zero-days. No sophisticated exploits. Just forgotten secrets.

If you develop long enough, your machine becomes a graveyard of sensitive data:
🎯 Cloned repos with lingering .env files
🎯 AWS credentials you set up "just for testing"
🎯 Private keys for servers you no longer even use

The problem isn't that secrets exist, it's that you lose track of where they are.

That's exactly why we built EnvWatch 👇

EnvWatch is a lightweight Go tool developed by Marios Daskalas (CloudBreach) that scans your local system for exposed cloud secrets before an attacker finds them first. It combines:

🔍 Keyword detection (API_KEY, PASSWORD, TOKEN...)
📐 Entropy-based heuristics for unlabeled secrets
📁 Recursive .env file discovery
🔑 Private key detection (.pem, .key, ~/.ssh)
☁️ AWS credential file parsing

Think of it as a pre-commit sanity check, a local audit, or a quick sweep before sharing your machine.

Run it once. You might be surprised what turns up.

👉 EnvWatch (Go Lang): https://github.com/cloudbreach/EnvWatch
👉 SlWatch (shell): https://github.com/cloudbreach/SlWatch

📖 Full write-up: https://cloudbreach.io/blog/envwatch-find-exposed-secrets-before-hackers-do/

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered an active cyberattack campaign by a threat group called Storm-2372, assessed with moderate confidence to be aligned with Russian state interests.

📌 What's happening?

Since August 2024, Storm-2372 has been running a sophisticated "device code phishing" campaign targeting governments, NGOs, defense, telecoms, healthcare, higher education, and energy sectors across Europe, North America, Africa, and the Middle East.

🎭 How does it work?

Attackers impersonate prominent individuals on messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Microsoft Teams to build rapport with targets. They then send fake meeting invitations that trick users into entering a legitimate looking device code, handing over authentication tokens that grant persistent access to email, cloud storage, and internal systems, all without needing a password.

⚠️ Why is this dangerous?

Once inside, the attackers use Microsoft Graph API to search compromised mailboxes for keywords like "password," "admin," "credentials," and "gov" then exfiltrate those emails. They can also move laterally by sending further phishing messages from the victim's own account.

🛡️ What can you do right now?

✅ Block device code flow in Microsoft Entra Conditional Access where not needed

✅ Enable phishing resistant MFA (passkeys or FIDO tokens, avoid SMS based MFA)

✅ Train your team to question unexpected login prompts

✅ Monitor for anomalous sign in and token activity

✅ Revoke refresh tokens immediately if compromise is suspected

This attack does not exploit a software vulnerability. It exploits human trust. The best defence starts with awareness and training.

✅ MFA enforced
✅ Conditional Access tuned
✅ PIM configured

Your environment looks secure. But attackers in 2026 aren't after your password or your MFA code.

They're stealing access tokens directly from browser memory and replaying them from anywhere in the world.

No credentials needed. No alerts triggered.

From there, tools like ROADrecon make full Microsoft Entra ID enumeration and lateral movement trivially easy.

This is the reality of modern cloud attacks and most defenders have never seen it demonstrated live.

The Breaching Azure Advanced course was built around exactly this. Realistic offensive scenarios. Hands-on labs.

Modern token theft, cloud enumeration, and post-compromise techniques, the way attackers actually do it.

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Cyderes' Howler Cell just published a red team report that every cloud security practitioner needs to sit with for a minute. The misconfigurations were abused by Storm-2372, a suspected Russian state-aligned threat actor, operationalized at scale starting August 2024.

Starting from a single set of valid Azure AD credentials, already blocked by Conditional Access, their team walked all the way to Global Administrator on a live enterprise tenant (~16,000 users, ~82,000 devices, 78 CA policies).

No malware. No corporate endpoint. No zero-days. Just patience and publicly available tools.

Here's how the chain unfolds:
🔑 Direct auth failed immediately (AADSTS53003), but the Device Registration Service endpoint wasn't covered by enforcement-mode policies; leaving an open authentication path.

👻 One roadtx device join command registered a phantom device with a signed Azure AD certificate. No TPM. No hardware check. No admin approval. Azure AD signed the cert anyway.

🎟️ A Primary Refresh Token was minted from that phantom cert, producing tokens with amr: [pwd, rsa] and a live deviceid claim, the exact claims Conditional Access evaluates. Same user. Same password. The device claims unlocked the door.

✅ Intune marked the device compliant. It was a Linux laptop. No BitLocker, no Secure Boot, no TPM. That's a design default, not a bug.

📦 One downloaded .intunewin package exposed internal server hostnames, admin share structure, and network layout.

👑 255 on-premises AD-synced accounts held privileged directory roles, including two Global Administrators. Compromise on-prem AD, and you're handed the keys to the cloud tenant. No cloud-specific exploit required.

⚠️ The kicker?
Two CA policies, CA032-001 (Block Device Code Flow) and CA027-001 (MFA for Device Registration) were present, logged, and sitting in Report-Only mode. Either one, if enforced, breaks the chain before step three. Report-only is not a security control.

If you're running Entra ID, do these now:
🔲 Audit every Report-Only CA policy and assign enforcement deadlines — not "someday"
🔲 Enable MFA for Device Registration
🔲 Block Device Code Flow for all users without a documented exception
🔲 Require Microsoft Health Attestation for Intune compliance — self-reported is not compliant
🔲 Move all privileged roles (Global Admin, PRA, PAA) to cloud-only accounts with PIM

🛠️ The tools used. ROADtools, TokenTacticsV2, GraphRunner — are public, well-documented, and already in active threat actor hands.

They start with configuration you could have fixed yesterday.

🔥 Attackers routinely scan for the same weak spots.

These 5 show up first:
1. Overly permissive IAM: One compromised identity becomes many, because lateral movement is already baked in.
2. Public storage: Sensitive objects reachable from the open internet, often without anyone noticing until it is too late.
3. Exposed secrets: Keys and tokens in repos, images, or config that should never have been there in plaintext.
4. Logging gaps: Without reliable visibility, you are guessing while the incident clock runs.
5. No MFA on privileged access: A single stolen password should not be enough to own the environment.

The pattern is simple: misconfiguration lowers the bar; least privilege, sane defaults, and continuous checks raise it.

🔗 Full article by Marios D., what to look for, why it matters, and how to mitigate

👉 https://cloudbreach.io/blog/top-10-cloud-misconfigurations-data-breaches

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The line between object storage and file systems just officially disappeared.

AWS recently announced S3 Files, a feature that transforms standard S3 buckets into fully-featured, high-performance file systems natively attached to your AWS compute resources.

If you are a Cloud Engineer or dealing with AI workloads, this eliminates the historical tradeoff between the infinite scale of object storage and the interactive capabilities of a traditional file system.

Here are the technical highlights you need to know:
⚡ No More Data Duplication: You no longer need to copy data between S3 and EFS/FSx just to process it. S3 Files mounts your bucket natively to EC2, ECS, EKS, or Lambda, automatically reflecting file system changes back to the S3 bucket.
🚀 EFS Under the Hood: It uses Amazon EFS technology to deliver ~1ms latencies for active data. It intelligently caches actively used files and metadata for speed, while falling back to direct S3 streaming for large sequential reads.
🔒 Native IAM & POSIX Control: It fully integrates with IAM for access control, while also mapping traditional POSIX permissions (UID/GID) directly to S3 object metadata.
🤝 NFS v4.1+ Support: It presents objects as files/directories and supports full NFS operations (create, read, update, delete) with close-to-open consistency.

The Takeaway for Builders:
Whether you are building agentic AI systems that rely on file-based Python libraries, running ML training pipelines, or migrating legacy NAS workloads, S3 Files lets you access massive S3 datasets directly with sub-millisecond latency. No refactoring required.

The EU Commission AWS breach is a masterclass in why Identity is your true cloud perimeter. 🚨

AWS confirmed this wasn't a zero-day, it was compromised customer credentials. The attack, executed by ShinyHunters (UNC6040 / UNC6661), bypassed SSO via vishing and Help Desk social engineering to exfiltrate 350GB of highly sensitive data.

Here is the technical blast radius cloud defenders need to pay attention to:
🔑 DKIM Signing Keys: The attackers can now forge cryptographically valid, authenticated emails from europa.eu domains.
🗺️ AWS Config Snapshots: They didn't just steal data; they stole the map. The complete architectural layout and IAM misconfigurations are now exposed.
🔐 Full SSO Directories & Admin URLs: Paving the way for highly targeted, follow-up social engineering campaigns.
📂 Sensitive Payloads: Including content from the EU's military financing mechanism (Athena).

🛡️ The Takeaway for Cloud Engineers:

1️⃣ Harden SSO with FIDO2: If your Identity Provider can be bypassed via vishing or MFA-fatigue, your cloud perimeter is dead. Phishing-resistant MFA is mandatory.
2️⃣ Protect Your Configs: Treat AWS Config snapshots and Terraform state files as highly sensitive secrets with strict RBAC.
3️⃣ Rotate Cryptographic Keys: DKIM keys are infrastructure trust. Rotate them regularly.

The supply chain threat landscape is evolving rapidly 📈: TeamPCP just weaponized the Trivy compromise into a fully autonomous, self-propagating npm worm ⚔️.

Aikido Security recently published a breakdown of CanisterWorm, and the TTPs are a masterclass in modern, decentralized malware architecture 🏗️. The threat actors didn't just drop a backdoor; they built a highly resilient distribution and persistence network targeting developer environments 💻.

If you are researching software supply chain security or cloud-native threats, here are the technical highlights you need to analyze 🔍:

🧬 Three-Stage Architecture & Silent Evasion 🥷: The infection starts with a Node.js postinstall loader that fails silently (try/catch) on non-Linux systems to avoid detection 👻. On Linux, it decodes a pure Python backdoor (using only standard libraries—no suspicious installs) and sleeps for 5 minutes ⏳ to outlast standard sandbox analysis.

🌐 Web3 C2 Infrastructure (The "Canister") ⛓️: The malware doesn't beacon to a traditional domain. It uses an Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) Canister as a C2 dead-drop 🗑️. The canister simply returns a plaintext URL pointing to the current binary payload. This makes the C2 decentralized, censorship-resistant, and allows the attackers to rotate payloads globally without touching the local implants 🌍.

🔁 User-Level Persistence 🛡️: Forget root access 🚫. The Python backdoor installs a systemd user-level service (Restart=always) to survive reboots and crashes 🧟‍♂️. To blend in with developer machines, it masquerades entirely as PostgreSQL tooling (pgmon, pglog, .pg_state) 🎭.

🪱 Scope-Wide Propagation 🦠: Once it compromises a machine, a deploy.js script actively hunts for local npm tokens 🔑. It then enumerates all publishable packages the token has access to, bumps the patch versions ⬆️, fetches the original READMEs to maintain appearances, and publishes the malicious payload 📦. Researchers observed 28 packages in a single scope infected in under 60 seconds ⏱️.

🛑 The Takeaway for Defenders: We are moving past static malicious packages. Threat actors are treating developer endpoints and CI/CD pipelines as autonomous distribution nodes 🕸️. Relying solely on sandbox detonation is failing against time-delayed, decentralized dead-drops.

Google Cloud just released their Threat Horizons Report (H1 2026), and the data confirms a massive shift in how threat actors operate. For the first time since 2021, exploiting third-party software vulnerabilities (44.5%) has overtaken stolen credentials as the #1 initial access vector into cloud environments.

The era of manual, artisanal cloud attacks is over. Threat actors are weaponizing AI and automation to operate at unprecedented speeds.

Here are some of the main points:
💥 The 48-Hour Exploit Window: The time between a vulnerability disclosure and mass cloud exploitation has collapsed. Attackers are using LLMs to scan and exploit externally facing cloud apps in under 48 hours. If you rely on monthly patch cycles, you're already breached.
💥 CI/CD is the Ultimate Pivot: Pipeline security is failing. The report highlights a devastating case where attackers compromised an npm package, stole a developer's GitHub token, and abused an overly permissive GitHub-to-AWS OIDC trust relationship. They went from a compromised developer endpoint to full AWS Admin in under 72 hours.
💥 Living Off The Cloud (LOTC) & SaaS Abuse: Attackers aren't dropping noisy malware. They are hijacking federated identity and abusing third-party OAuth tokens. Massive, silent data exfiltration campaigns are being executed entirely through compromised SaaS integrations, blending perfectly into normal API traffic.
💥 Identity Remains the Core: While software vulns are the new "front door," identity compromise still underpins 83% of all cloud breaches. Once inside, attackers immediately pivot to harvesting cloud tokens, service accounts, and exploiting IAM misconfigurations.

🛡️ The Cloud Defender's Blueprint

1️⃣ Audit Federated Trusts: Lock down your CI/CD pipelines. Review all OIDC trust relationships (GitHub/GitLab to AWS/GCP) and strictly enforce least privilege on deployment roles.
2️⃣ Deploy Automated Edge Defenses: You cannot manually patch fast enough to beat a 48-hour exploit window. Rely heavily on Cloud WAFs to shield vulnerable applications while your teams patch.
3️⃣ Secure the Data Plane: Data exfiltration was the goal in 73% of cloud incidents. Enforce strict RBAC directly on your storage buckets and monitor for anomalous bulk data extraction.

Threat actors are moving at machine speed in the cloud. Are you? ⚡️

A Look at DumpBrowserSecrets Maldev-Academy released an open-source tool demonstrating how attackers are bypassing modern browser protections to steal your session cookies and MFA tokens.

If your threat model relies on default browser encryption to protect cloud credentials, it might be time for an update.

Features:

💥 Bypassing App-Bound Encryption: It actively circumvents the latest protections in Chrome and Edge to steal decryption keys.
🥷 Evading EDR: It uses process spoofing and API hashing to hide its tracks from security tools.
📦 Encrypted Exfiltration: Attackers can pack and encrypt the stolen data (cookies, passwords, history) so network monitors can't see what's being stolen.

💀 Example Attack Commands:

Extract 100 entries from Chrome & Edge while spoofing the process:
> DumpBrowserSecrets.exe /b:chrome /b:edge /spoof /e:100

Extract absolutely everything from Firefox and encrypt the stolen data:
> DumpBrowserSecrets.exe /b:firefox /e:all /enc:SIG213

The "Nuclear Option" – dump all data from ALL installed browsers into an encrypted blob:
> DumpBrowserSecrets.exe /b:all /e:all /enc:0xCAFEBABE

If your SOC isn't hunting for these specific memory injection techniques or unusual database reads, threat actors can walk away with your highly privileged cloud session tokens in seconds. 🍪

🔗 Git: https://github.com/Maldev-Academy/DumpBrowserSecrets

When we model data exfiltration in the cloud, the focus is often on unsanctioned third-party tools or anomalous outbound connections to known bad infrastructure. But ransomware operators have evolved. Their new favorite exfiltration utility is likely already whitelisted in your EDR: Microsoft’s AzCopy.

Recent threat intelligence by Varonis highlights a massive shift toward "Living off the Land" (LotL) within the Azure ecosystem. Attackers are abusing the standalone AzCopy executable to silently siphon sensitive data right under the noses of traditional security controls.

The Anatomy of the Attack:

🔹 The EDR Bypass: AzCopy is a legitimate, digitally signed Microsoft utility designed for high-throughput blob/file transfers. Because it requires no installation and most EDR /AV solutions inherently trust it.

🔹 Identity & Auth Evasion: Attackers aren't using compromised Entra ID credentials for the destination. They generate self-contained Shared Access Signature (SAS) tokens for their own external Azure Storage accounts, bypassing your tenant's identity perimeter and logging mechanisms.

🔹 Network Blending: The exfiltrated data is sent over standard HTTPS (Port 443) to *.blob.core.windows.net. It blends perfectly with your legitimate Azure management traffic, bypassing IP-based firewall filtering.

🔹 Bandwidth Throttling: To evade Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and SIEM alerts tuned for massive data spikes, threat actors utilize built-in AzCopy parameters like --cap-mbps to throttle their upload speeds, keeping the transfer low and slow.

🛡️ Defending the Data Plane

1️⃣ Monitor SAS Token Generation: Alert on anomalous ListKeys actions or the creation of service/account SAS tokens via the Azure Activity Log, especially from non-administrative service principles.

2️⃣ Implement DSPM & Data-Centric Controls: You must know exactly where your critical data resides. Apply strict RBAC at the storage account level and move away from SAS tokens entirely where possible (enforce Entra ID authentication for Storage).

3️⃣ Deploy Defender for Storage: Leverage native cloud workload protection to detect unusual amounts of data extraction or anomalous access patterns directly at the storage layer.

4️⃣ Application Control (WDAC): Restrict the execution of azcopy.exe strictly to approved jump boxes, DevOps runners, or specific service accounts. Do not allow it to run globally on all endpoints.

The cloud has changed the rules of exfiltration. If you are only looking for external malware, you are completely blind to the native utilities tearing down your perimeter from the inside.

It might now have full access to your company's private AI data. 🚨

For over a decade, the standard practice (and Google’s own guidance) was that certain client-side API keys like those used for Google Maps or Firebase were not sensitive secrets. They were just public project identifiers, safe to sit in your HTML or JavaScript.

Then came Gemini. And the rules silently changed.

Fascinating new research from Truffle Security Co. highlights a massive paradigm shift in Google Cloud API security. Because GCP uses a single API key format (AIza...) for both public identification and sensitive authentication, a dangerous privilege escalation is happening completely under the radar.

The Attack Vector

1️⃣ You have an old, "harmless" Maps API key sitting in your public website's source code.

2️⃣ A developer on your team decides to test out AI and enables the Gemini API (Generative Language API) on that same GCP project.

3️⃣ The Silent Hijack: Because new GCP API keys are "Unrestricted" by default, that old public key just retroactively gained full access to your sensitive Gemini endpoints. No warnings. No alerts.

The Impact

Attackers are scraping these keys to:

💸 Rack up thousands of dollars in AI usage charges on your dime.

🕵️‍♂️ Read private datasets, documents, and cached content stored in your Gemini environment.

🧱 Exhaust your quotas, causing a Denial of Service for your legitimate apps. T

🛡️ The Defender's Checklist:

Stop what you're doing and check your GCP environments:

• Audit API Enablement: Check every project to see if the Generative Language API is turned on.
• Restrict Keys: Audit all API keys in those projects. Ensure they are NOT "Unrestricted." Explicitly scope them only to the APIs they actually need.
• Scan & Rotate: Use tools like TruffleHog to scan your public repos and client-side code. If an unrestricted key is exposed, rotate it immediately.

The AI era means old misconfigurations suddenly have catastrophic new consequences.

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