New analysis has uncovered continued danger from a identified safety weak spot in Microsoft’s Entra ID, doubtlessly enabling malicious actors to realize account takeovers in prone software-as-a-service (SaaS) functions.
Id safety firm Semperis, in an evaluation of 104 SaaS functions, discovered 9 of them to be susceptible to Entra ID cross-tenant nOAuth abuse.
First disclosed by Descope in June 2023, nOAuth refers to a weak spot in how SaaS functions implement OpenID Join (OIDC), which refers to an authentication layer constructed atop OAuth to confirm a person’s id.
The authentication implementation flaw primarily permits a nasty actor to vary the mail attribute within the Entra ID account to that of a sufferer’s and make the most of the app’s “Log in with Microsoft” function to hijack that account.
The assault is trivial, however it additionally works as a result of Entra ID permits customers to have an unverified e-mail tackle, opening the door to person impersonation throughout tenant boundaries.
It additionally exploits the truth that an app utilizing a number of id suppliers (e.g., Google, Fb, or Microsoft) might inadvertently permit an attacker to check in to a goal person’s account just because the e-mail tackle is used as the only standards to uniquely determine customers and merge accounts.
Semperis’ risk mannequin focuses on a variant of nOAuth, particularly discovering functions 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 id architect at Semperis, stated. “It is low effort, leaves virtually no hint and bypasses finish‑person protections.”
“An attacker that efficiently abuses nOAuth would have the option not solely to realize entry to the SaaS utility knowledge, but additionally doubtlessly to pivot into Microsoft 365 sources.”
Semperis stated 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 aside from topic identifier (known as the “sub” declare) to uniquely determine an finish person in OpenID Join is non-compliant.
“If an OpenID Join relying occasion 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 id supplier and relying occasion,” the corporate famous at the moment.
Mitigating nOAuth finally rests within the palms of builders, who should correctly implement authentication to forestall account takeovers by creating a novel, immutable person identifier.
“nOAuth abuse exploits cross-tenant vulnerabilities and may result in SaaS utility knowledge exfiltration, persistence, and lateral motion,” the corporate stated. “The abuse is tough for patrons of susceptible functions to detect and not possible for patrons of susceptible functions to defend in opposition to.”
The disclosure comes as Development Micro revealed that misconfigured or overly privileged containers in Kubernetes environments can be utilized to facilitate entry to delicate Amazon Internet Companies (AWS) credentials, enabling attackers to conduct follow-on actions.
The cybersecurity firm stated attackers can exploit extreme privileges granted to containers utilizing strategies like packet sniffing of unencrypted HTTP site 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 stated.
“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.”
