Security Operations Center
Red Team Exercise — Entra ID Identity Takeover

CyberSecurity

Offensive security research, identity plane attack simulation, and defensive control validation for institutional cloud infrastructure. This exercise reconstructs a 7-stage identity takeover against Microsoft Entra ID — from cached credential abuse to complete MFA destruction — in under 60 seconds.

7-Stage Kill Chain
10 MITRE ATT&CK Techniques
<60s Total Execution
5 KQL Detection Queries
Why This Matters

The Identity Plane Is the New Perimeter

Traditional network security assumed a hard perimeter — firewalls, DMZs, VPNs. Cloud-native infrastructure has dissolved that boundary entirely. In a world where every resource is accessible via API, the identity plane is the only perimeter that matters.

A single compromised Global Administrator token grants unrestricted access to every user, every application, every piece of data in the tenant. No firewall rule stops it. No network segmentation contains it. The attack surface is the entire Microsoft Graph API — and it responds in milliseconds.

This red team exercise proves that a complete identity takeover — credential rotation, session destruction, privilege escalation, and total MFA wipe — can be executed in under 60 seconds with 12 API calls. The only defense is detection depth and response speed.

Identity shield visualization
My Background

15+ years architecting cloud infrastructure across Azure, AWS, and GCP — including identity systems securing $40B+ in assets under management. My security practice spans Entra ID hardening, zero-trust architecture, Conditional Access engineering, workload identity federation, and offensive security validation through red team exercises like this one. I build the systems that protect institutional capital, then I break them to prove they hold.

Attack Reconstruction

7-Stage Identity Kill Chain

Each stage was derived from a real operational engagement against a Microsoft Entra ID tenant. Click any stage to expand the technical detail, MITRE mapping, and risk assessment.

Kill chain attack flow visualization
<60s
Total Elapsed
~12
API Calls
0
Alerts Fired
None
Recovery Path
Framework Alignment

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

StageTechnique IDTechniqueTactic
1T1528Steal Application Access TokenCredential Access
1T1550.001Use Alternate Auth MaterialDefense Evasion
2T1087.004Cloud Account DiscoveryDiscovery
3T1098.001Additional Cloud CredentialsPersistence
4T1531Account Access RemovalImpact
5T1098.003Additional Cloud RolesPrivilege Escalation
5T1484.002Domain Trust ModificationDefense Evasion
6T1556.006Modify MFA ProcessCredential Access
7T1070.004Indicator RemovalDefense Evasion
Remediation

Recommended Defensive Controls

12 controls across three implementation horizons, designed to break this kill chain at multiple stages simultaneously.

Secure data center infrastructure

Immediate

Week 1
  • Sentinel alert on revokeSignInSessions by non-break-glass admins
  • Sentinel alert on authentication method deletion events
  • Alert on addPassword → removePassword within 1 hour on same application
  • Out-of-band SMS/email to user when password is administratively reset

Short-Term

Month 1
  • PIM enforcement for all Global Administrator operations
  • Workload Identity Conditional Access restricting SPN to known IP ranges
  • Application permission baseline with drift alerting
  • Encrypted CLI token cache on all admin workstations

Medium-Term

Quarter
  • Administrative Units for scoped authentication method management
  • Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE) strict mode for privileged users
  • App consent policy blocking self-service UserAuthenticationMethod.* grants
  • Documented break-glass recovery SOP for zero-MFA state
Detection Engineering

KQL Detection Queries

Production-ready Microsoft Sentinel analytics rules designed to detect each phase of this attack chain. Deploy directly to your Sentinel workspace.

Password Reset + Session Revocation Correlation

Detects admin password reset followed by session revocation within 10 minutes — the signature of Stages 3-4.

let timeWindow = 10m;
AuditLogs
| where OperationName == "Reset user password"
| extend TargetUser = tostring(TargetResources[0].userPrincipalName)
| extend Initiator = tostring(InitiatedBy.user.userPrincipalName)
| where Initiator != TargetUser
| join kind=inner (
    AuditLogs
    | where OperationName == "Revoke sign-in sessions"
    | extend TargetUser = tostring(TargetResources[0].userPrincipalName)
) on TargetUser
| where TimeGenerated1 between (TimeGenerated .. (TimeGenerated + timeWindow))

Bulk MFA Method Deletion

Fires when 2+ authentication methods are deleted from a single user within 15 minutes.

AuditLogs
| where OperationName has "Delete"
    and OperationName has "authentication method"
| extend TargetUser = tostring(TargetResources[0].userPrincipalName)
| summarize MethodsDeleted = count(),
    Methods = make_set(OperationName)
    by TargetUser, bin(TimeGenerated, 15m)
| where MethodsDeleted >= 2

Ephemeral Client Secret Pattern

Catches the create-then-destroy credential pattern used in Stage 5-7.

let timeWindow = 2h;
AuditLogs
| where OperationName == "Add service principal credentials"
| extend AppId = tostring(TargetResources[0].id)
| join kind=inner (
    AuditLogs
    | where OperationName == "Remove service principal credentials"
    | extend AppId = tostring(TargetResources[0].id)
) on AppId
| where TimeGenerated1 between (TimeGenerated .. (TimeGenerated + timeWindow))
| project AddTime = TimeGenerated, RemoveTime = TimeGenerated1,
    Duration = TimeGenerated1 - TimeGenerated

Full Kill Chain — Composite Detection

Correlates password reset + session revocation + MFA deletion within 30 minutes. CRITICAL severity.

let timeWindow = 30m;
let passwordResets = AuditLogs
    | where OperationName == "Reset user password";
let sessionRevocations = AuditLogs
    | where OperationName == "Revoke sign-in sessions";
let mfaDeletions = AuditLogs
    | where OperationName has "Delete"
        and OperationName has "authentication method";
passwordResets
| extend TargetUser = tostring(TargetResources[0].userPrincipalName)
| join kind=inner (
    sessionRevocations
    | extend TargetUser = tostring(TargetResources[0].userPrincipalName)
) on TargetUser
| join kind=inner (
    mfaDeletions
    | extend TargetUser = tostring(TargetResources[0].userPrincipalName)
) on TargetUser
| where TimeGenerated1 between (TimeGenerated .. (TimeGenerated + timeWindow))
    and TimeGenerated2 between (TimeGenerated .. (TimeGenerated + timeWindow))
| extend AlertSeverity = "CRITICAL"