An unusually high number of export actions were performed targeting credentials stored within Azure services, such as Azure Storage.
Credentials were accessed or exported from multiple Azure services in a short duration, indicating potential credential harvesting.
Credentials were accessed by accounts or service principals that have not previously accessed these services or credentials.
Possible Root Causes
Unauthorized Access: A threat actor has obtained access to an account or service principal and is attempting to enumerate or exfiltrate credentials.
Automated Backup or Compliance Tasks: Scheduled jobs or scripts may be exporting credentials for backup, disaster recovery, or compliance purposes.
Policy-Driven Actions: Credential export actions may be related to key rotation policies or regulatory requirements.
Internal Security Testing: Security teams may conduct tests or compliance audits that involve bulk access to credentials across services.
Business Impact
Exposed Azure credentials may enable attackers to access critical resources, disrupt operations, and escalate privileges within the environment.
Compromised credentials could allow attackers to steal sensitive data, such as customer information or intellectual property.
Attackers may use stolen credentials to deploy costly resources, such as VMs for cryptomining.
Unauthorized access could disrupt critical applications by modifying or deleting essential resources.
Credential exposure could lead to privilege escalation, granting attackers full control over cloud environments.
Steps to Verify
Analyze Activity Logs: Review logs for unusual credential export activity, focusing on the frequency, timing, and signs of automated exports or bulk actions inconsistent with normal operations.
Review Access Patterns: Check whether the account or service principal involved shows deviations from its typical access behavior, especially across the affected Azure services.
Inspect Permissions: Ensure that the account or principal's permissions were not recently elevated, which may indicate unauthorized privilege escalation.
Actions if Confirmed Suspicious:
Disable or rotate affected credentials to prevent further misuse.
Restrict access from unusual IP ranges or locations involved in the activity.
Conduct a deeper investigation into affected resources to assess the extent of access and identify any further compromised assets.
Notify relevant stakeholders and document the event in the incident management system for proper follow-up.
Azure Suspect Credential Dump
Possible root causes
Malicious Detection
Benign Detection
Azure Suspect Credential Dump
Example scenarios
Azure Suspect Credential Dump
Business impact
If this detection indicates a genuine threat, the organization faces significant risks:
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