In Azure, the Owner role of a Subscription or a Management group provides entities it is assigned to with
the maximum level of privileges. The Owner role allows managing all resources and assigning any role to other entities.
Because it is a powerful entitlement, it should be granted to as few users as possible.
When a custom role has the same level of permissions as the Owner one, there are greater chances that high privileges are granted to
too many users.
What is the potential impact?
Custom roles that provide the same level of permissions as Owner might indicate a configuration issue. Any entity assigned with it can
perform any action on the Subscription or Management group, including changing roles and permissions.
If the affected role is unexpectedly assigned to users, they can compromise the affected scope. They can do so in the long term by assigning
dangerous roles to other users or entities.
Depending on the scope to which the role is assignable, the exact impact of a successful exploitation may vary. It generally ranges from data
compromise to the takeover of the cloud infrastructure.
Infrastructure takeover
By obtaining the right role, an attacker can gain control over part or all of the Azure infrastructure. They can modify DNS settings, redirect
traffic, or launch malicious instances that can be used for various nefarious activities, including launching DDoS attacks, hosting phishing websites,
or distributing malware. Malicious instances may also be used for resource-intensive tasks such as cryptocurrency mining.
This can result in legal liability, but also increased costs, degraded performance, and potential service disruptions.
Furthermore, corporate Azure infrastructures are often connected to other services and to the internal networks of the organization. Because of
this, cloud infrastructure is often used by attackers as a gateway to other assets. Attackers can leverage this gateway to gain access to more
services, to compromise more business-critical data, and to cause more damage to the overall infrastructure.
Compromise of sensitive data
If the affected service is used to store or process personally identifiable information or other sensitive data, attackers with the correct role
could be able to access it. Depending on the type of data that is compromised, it could lead to privacy violations, identity theft, financial loss, or
other negative outcomes.
In most cases, a company suffering a sensitive data compromise will face a reputational loss when the security issue is publicly disclosed.
Financial loss
Financial losses can occur when a malicious user is able to use a paid third-party-provided service. Each users assigned with a bad role will be
able to use it without limit to use the third party service to their own need, including in a way that was not expected.
This additional use will lead to added costs with the Azure service provider.
Moreover, when rate or volume limiting is set up on the provider side, this additional use can prevent the regular operation of the affected
environment. This might result in a partial denial of service for all legitimate users.
