Recently, Microsoft and other vendors have been successfully targeted by the LAPSUS$ attack group using MFA spam as Microsoft describes in this blog post on the MSRC: https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/03/22/dev-0537-criminal-actor-targeting-organizations-for-data-exfiltration-and-destruction/ Analysis One of the techniques that were used in the attacks is “MFA spamming” which basically means that the attackers prompted users with MFA requests until they…
Tag: Azure AD
Conditional Access – device identification using certificates
Note Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS) has been renamed to Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (MDCA) at Ignite 2021. This post does not yet reflect that name change. Conditional Access is great. However, when it comes to managed devices it only allows to check for Hybrid Azure AD join and Intune compliance. With Microsoft Cloud…
Conditional Access Authentication Context – Protect sensitive data
As part of Microsoft’s Zero Trust strategy, Conditional Access has been the central control mechanism in Azure AD to define which kind of access controls must be fulfilled to access cloud apps that are integrated with Azure AD. However, until now it was not possible to define more granular controls. With Conditional Access Authentication Context…
Build a strong cloud perimeter with Conditional Access
Phew, another article about Conditional Access. That’s right, there a quite a few already. Fortunately, this topic never gets old. Here’s why: In the cloud there are no traditional network perimeters anymore. On-prem appliances are rendered useless as cloud services can be accessed world-wide. All you need is a valid set of credentials to sign-in….
Getting started with Azure AD Administrative Units
Azure AD always had a big advanced over on-premises Active Directory: a very granular RBAC approach when it come to administration. However, there is also a downside – roles can only be applied globally without a limited scope. This has changed now. Being in a PowerShell based preview for quite some time, Azure AD Administrative…
Azure AD Security Defaults – one click and done?
Security in the Microsoft world has never been an on/off switch. Looking back at Windows and especially Active Directory there have always been multiple steps that had to be considered. With the cloud and Azure AD, some companies used the possibility not to start with the same mistakes that were made in the past. Unfortunately,…
Going passwordless with Azure Active Directory – part 2
The passwordless story is not over. A while back, I summarized the possibilites we have to reduce the usage of passwords with Azure AD. You can find this post here: https://chrisonsecurity.net/2019/07/28/going-passwordless-with-azure-active-directory/ This topic will become more and more important in the future, so I decided to to a follow up to cover some additional things….
From the field: forced password reset in Azure AD Identity Protection
Azure AD Identity Protection is one of the most sophisticated features in Azure Active Directory (Premium P2). Based on Microsoft’s Intelligent Security Graph it detects users and sign-ins at risk and responds at a level you select. If you have the required licenses it should be part of every cloud security baseline. It features different…
Going passwordless with Azure Active Directory
Passwords are not ideal A world without passwords! Passwordless – seems to be the dream for anyone that has to manage a number of accounts. Who even likes passwords? Well, I know who doesn’t: IT admins don’t like passwords Why passwords are a major pain point for many organizations: reused credentials across multiple services increase…