Cloud environments have rapidly become the backbone of modern enterprises, but with this speed and flexibility comes an increase in complexity, particularly when it comes to managing permissions and ensuring security. One of the most pervasive risks in cloud security today is privilege escalation, where attackers exploit misconfigurations or over-permissive roles to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and systems. Notably, over 50% of enterprises have identities capable of escalating privileges to super admin roles, posing a critical vulnerability that can lead to devastating security breaches.
Each cloud provider offers its own complex permission models, such as AWS’s IAM (Identity and Access Management), Azure’s RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), and Google Cloud’s IAM. These models are robust but also difficult to monitor and manage as cloud infrastructure grows and evolves. Over time, it becomes easy for permissions to become over-provisioned or misconfigured, creating opportunities for attackers to exploit.
How Privilege Escalation Works
Privilege escalation typically follows a series of steps, often starting with compromised credentials or access tokens. Once inside an environment, attackers hunt for misconfigured permissions that allow them to take actions beyond their original privileges. For instance:
- Abusing iam:PassRole: Attackers use this permission to pass highly privileged roles to services they control.
- Abusing sts:AssumeRole: Attackers assume roles that provide higher-level privileges, allowing them to execute further malicious activities.
- Lambda Functions: Exploiting permissions on Lambda functions to trigger code execution under elevated privileges.
While these examples are focused on AWS, similar risks exist in Azure and Google Cloud, where attackers look for ways to elevate privileges through misconfigurations in role assignments, managed identities, and service accounts.
The Role of CAASM in Cloud Permission Management
Enter Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM), a platform designed to provide comprehensive visibility and management across your cloud environment’s entire attack surface, including assets, roles, permissions, and configurations. In environments like AWS, where managing hundreds or thousands of IAM roles, policies, and permissions is cumbersome, CAASM platforms like JupiterOne help security teams gain the context they need to prevent privilege escalation risks.
Here’s how CAASM helps address cloud permissions and privilege escalation challenges:
- Unified Visibility: A centralized view of all cloud assets, including users, roles, permissions, and policies. Instead of piecing together information from multiple dashboards and cloud consoles, teams can visualize their entire cloud environment in one place. This visibility is crucial in identifying misconfigurations or over-provisioned permissions before they are exploited.
- Continuous Monitoring and Alerts: Continuously monitors changes to permissions, roles, and policies. If a high-risk permission is inadvertently granted or a role is created with excessive access, CAASM can trigger alerts to notify the security team immediately, allowing for rapid remediation.
- Automated Queries and Policies: Security teams can create specific queries to monitor for risky permissions, such as instances where roles have excessive privileges or policies grant access to sensitive services.
Proactively Detecting Cloud Privilege Escalation with JupiterOne
JupiterOne has implemented AWS, Azure (coming soon) and GCP privilege escalation detection rules by leveraging the techniques documented in the Hacking the Cloud blog. These rules focus on identifying key permission misconfigurations that attackers commonly exploit to elevate privileges within cloud environments. For example, JupiterOne monitors for risky permissions such as iam:PassRole, which allows attackers to pass highly privileged roles to services they control, and sts:AssumeRole, enabling unauthorized users to assume roles with higher privileges. By continuously querying and mapping these permissions, JupiterOne can detect and alert security teams of any configurations that could lead to privilege escalation, allowing for proactive remediation. Implementing these rules ensures that customers using JupiterOne are equipped to detect and prevent privilege escalation attacks in real-time, securing their AWS, Azure and GCP environments more effectively.
Next Steps
If you are looking for strategies to gain control over cloud permissions and prevent privilege escalation risks, don’t miss our upcoming webinar. Security experts Colin Blumer and Erin Crawford will share actionable insights and showcase how JupiterOne can serve as a powerful tool in strengthening your cloud security posture.
