Cloud Discovery With AzureHound Exposes Misconfigurations in Enterprise Environments
Category:Intelligence / Cloud Security
Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 released a detailed report on AzureHound, a discovery tool designed to map and audit Azure Active Directory environments. While intended for security auditing, threat actors have been observed repurposing AzureHound for lateral movement and privilege escalation. The report outlines techniques for detecting misuse through anomalous graph query patterns and excessive privilege enumeration.
CORTEX Protocol Intelligence Assessment
Business Impact: Unauthorized use of AzureHound could expose sensitive cloud identities and configurations, increasing lateral movement risk. Technical Context: Attackers leverage AzureHound data to pivot between cloud tenants, exploiting overprivileged service principals and misconfigured OAuth permissions.
Strategic Intelligence Guidance
- Monitor Azure AD sign-ins for enumeration anomalies.
- Enforce least privilege and conditional access policies.
- Review OAuth app permissions and service principal roles.
- Implement behavioral analytics for graph query anomalies.
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Intelligence Source: Cloud Discovery with AzureHound | Unit 42 by Palo Alto Networks | Oct 25, 2025