New analysis has uncovered continued danger from a identified safety weak point in Microsoft’s Entra ID, doubtlessly enabling malicious actors to realize account takeovers in vulnerable software-as-a-service (SaaS) purposes.
Id safety firm Semperis, in an evaluation of 104 SaaS purposes, discovered 9 of them to be weak to Entra ID cross-tenant nOAuth abuse.
First disclosed by Descope in June 2023, nOAuth refers to a weak point in how SaaS purposes implement OpenID Join (OIDC), which refers to an authentication layer constructed atop OAuth to confirm a consumer’s identification.
The authentication implementation flaw basically permits a foul actor to vary the mail attribute within the Entra ID account to that of a sufferer’s and reap the benefits of the app’s “Log in with Microsoft” function to hijack that account.
The assault is trivial, nevertheless it additionally works as a result of Entra ID permits customers to have an unverified electronic mail tackle, opening the door to consumer impersonation throughout tenant boundaries.
It additionally exploits the truth that an app utilizing a number of identification suppliers (e.g., Google, Fb, or Microsoft) might inadvertently permit an attacker to check in to a goal consumer’s account just because the e-mail tackle is used as the only real standards to uniquely determine customers and merge accounts.
Semperis’ risk mannequin focuses on a variant of nOAuth, particularly discovering purposes that permit for Entra ID cross-tenant entry. In different phrases, each the attacker and the sufferer are on two totally different Entra ID tenants.
“nOAuth abuse is a critical risk that many organizations could also be uncovered to,” Eric Woodruff, chief identification architect at Semperis, mentioned. “It is low effort, leaves virtually no hint and bypasses finish‑consumer protections.”
“An attacker that efficiently abuses nOAuth would have the option not solely to achieve entry to the SaaS software information, but in addition doubtlessly to pivot into Microsoft 365 sources.”
Semperis mentioned it reported the findings to Microsoft in December 2024, prompting the Home windows maker to reiterate suggestions it gave again in 2023, coinciding with the general public disclosure of nOAuth. It additionally famous that distributors that don’t adjust to the rules danger getting their apps faraway from the Entra App Gallery.
Microsoft has additionally emphasised that the usage of claims apart from topic identifier (known as the “sub” declare) to uniquely determine an finish consumer in OpenID Join is non-compliant.
“If an OpenID Join relying celebration makes use of any different claims in a token moreover a mix of the sub (topic) declare and the iss (issuer) declare as a main account identifier in OpenID Join, they’re breaking the contract of expectations between federated identification supplier and relying celebration,” the corporate famous at the moment.
Mitigating nOAuth in the end rests within the fingers of builders, who should correctly implement authentication to stop account takeovers by creating a singular, immutable consumer identifier.
“nOAuth abuse exploits cross-tenant vulnerabilities and might result in SaaS software information exfiltration, persistence, and lateral motion,” the corporate mentioned. “The abuse is troublesome for purchasers of weak purposes to detect and not possible for purchasers of weak purposes to defend in opposition to.”
The disclosure comes as Pattern Micro revealed that misconfigured or overly privileged containers in Kubernetes environments can be utilized to facilitate entry to delicate Amazon Internet Providers (AWS) credentials, enabling attackers to conduct follow-on actions.
The cybersecurity firm mentioned attackers can exploit extreme privileges granted to containers utilizing strategies like packet sniffing of unencrypted HTTP visitors to entry plaintext credentials and API spoofing, which makes use of manipulated Community Interface Card (NIC) settings to intercept Authorization tokens and acquire elevated privileges.
“The findings […] spotlight vital safety concerns when utilizing Amazon EKS Pod Id for simplifying AWS useful resource entry in Kubernetes environments,” safety researcher Jiri Gogela mentioned.
“These vulnerabilities underscore the significance of adhering to the precept of least privilege, making certain container configurations are scoped appropriately, and minimizing alternatives for exploitation by malicious actors.”