Deep-dive to Azure AD MFA: Creating a custom authenticator app

Deep-dive to Azure AD MFA: Creating a custom authenticator app

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is nowadays a recommended method for providing extra protection for users. In most cases, it protects users from phishing attacks as the attackers can’t log in even they have user’s credentials.

In this blog, I’ll report my findings on how the Azure AD MFA works under-the-hood, and how I built a custom authenticator app for Android. I also introduce some methods how the rogue administrator can bypass MFA when using user’s compromised credentials.

Unnoticed sidekick: Getting access to cloud as an on-prem admin

Unnoticed sidekick: Getting access to cloud as an on-prem admin

This post is part 55 of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 kill chain blog series.

Although on-prem administrators doesn’t usually have admin rights to Azure AD, they can have access to crucial information, such as Azure AD Connect, ADFS, and Active Directory. Administrators of these services can easily get admin rights to Azure AD to manipulate and impersonate users.

In this blog, using AADInternals v0.4.0, I’ll show how to get Global Admin access and how to impersonate users as an on-prem administrator.

Keys of the kingdom: Playing God as Global Admin

Keys of the kingdom: Playing God as Global Admin

This post is part 45 of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 kill chain blog series.

Global Admin role is the most powerfull administrator role in Azure AD. It is (almost) equivalent to the local system rigths in traditional Windows environment: If you are a Global Admin, there is no security! As a Global Admin, there are no limits what you are allowed to do. For instance, one can easily access others’ data. But why bother, if you can as easily impersonate users?

In this blog, using AADInternals v0.4.0, I’ll show how (as an Global Administrator) to gather information of Azure subscriptions, gather users’ credentials, get system level access to Azure VMs, and how to impersonate users.

Wolf in sheep's clothing: Azure Active Directory reconnaissance as an insider

Wolf in sheep's clothing: Azure Active Directory reconnaissance as an insider

This post is part 35 of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 kill chain blog series.

Azure AD and Office 365 are cloud services and most information is hidden to the members (or guests) of the tenant. However, there are plenty of information publicly available to anyone.

In this blog, using AADInternals v0.4.5, I’ll show how to gather information of any Azure AD tenant as an insider.

Quest for guest access: Azure Active Directory reconnaissance as a guest

Quest for guest access: Azure Active Directory reconnaissance as a guest

This post is part 25 of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 kill chain blog series.

When sharing SharePoint to people outside the organisations or inviting them to Teams, a corresponding guest account is created to Azure AD. Although the created guest account is not a pure insider, it has wide read-only access to organisation’s Azure AD information.

In this blog, using AADInternals v0.4.0, I’ll show how to gather information from Azure AD tenant as a guest user.

Just looking: Azure Active Directory reconnaissance as an outsider

Just looking: Azure Active Directory reconnaissance as an outsider

This post is part 15 of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 kill chain blog series.

Azure AD and Office 365 are cloud services and most information is available only to the members (or guests) of the tenant. However, there are plenty of information publicly available to anyone.

In this blog, using AADInternals v0.4.0, I’ll show how to gather information of any Azure AD tenant as an outsider.

Getting root access to Azure VMs as a Azure AD Global Administrator

Getting root access to Azure VMs as a Azure AD Global Administrator

Sean Metcalf (@Pyrotek3) organised a great webcast at the end of the May 2020. Among other things, Sean introduced a new (to me, at least) attack-vector where an Azure AD administrator can easily get a system level access to any Azure virtual machine of the organisation. Naturally, I had to implement this functionality to AADInternals.

In this blog, using AADInternals v0.3.3, I’ll show how a Global Administator can gain access to any Azure VM of the organisation.

Decrypting ADSync passwords - my journey into DPAPI

Decrypting ADSync passwords - my journey into DPAPI

Microsoft changed the location of ADSync encryption keys in Azure AD Connect version 1.4.x. These keys are used to encrypt and decrypt the passwords of “service accounts” used for syncing data from AD to Azure AD. Earlier versions saved the keys in the registry, but currently, it is using DPAPI. Thus, AADInternals couldn’t decrypt the passwords anymore. Luckily, Dirk-jan Mollema described in his great article how the encryption keys could be extracted and used to decrypt the passwords. Using Dirk-jan’s article as a starting point, I decided to implement this to AADInternals.

Azure AD Seamless SSO allows enumerating tenant users

Azure AD Seamless SSO allows enumerating tenant users

In 2017, Oliver Morton introduced a feature he found in Office 365 Active Sync, allowing enumerating the existence of the users based on http status codes. (Update: The “feature” was fixed by Microsoft on mid November 2019). In this blog, I’ll introduce my similar findings on using Microsoft API to enumerate users when Seamless SSO is enabled in Azure AD tenant.

Deep-dive to Azure Active Directory Identity Federation

Deep-dive to Azure Active Directory Identity Federation

Identity federation is regarded as the most secure way to authenticate users to Azure AD. In this blog, I’ll deep-dive to identity federation implementation of Azure AD and point out some serious security issues.

How to create over 256 character long passwords for cloud-only users

How to create over 256 character long passwords for cloud-only users

Microsoft (finally!) announced in April 2019 the support for 8-256 character passwords in Azure AD/Office 365. This limit does not apply to users whose passwords are synced from the on-prem Active Directory (or for federated users). In this blog, I tell how to set insanely long passwords (64K+) also for cloud-only users!

How to create a backdoor to Azure AD - part 1: Identity federation

How to create a backdoor to Azure AD - part 1: Identity federation

On November 2018 Azure AD MFA was down over 12 hours preventing users from logging in to Office 365. Same happened in October 2019 in US data centers. As MFA is usually mandatory for administrators by company policy, they couldn’t log in either. In this blog, I’ll show how to create a backdoor to Azure AD so you can log in and bypass MFA.

AADInternals published!

AADInternals published!

For the last couple months I’ve used most of my free time on studying and hacking Azure AD admin APIs. As a result, I’m finally publishing the first (beta) version of the AADInternals PowerShell module.