Techzone/Azure - Microsoft Azure

Azure - Microsoft Azure

3 min readArticle

Microsoft's cloud platform. Especially dominant in enterprise environments because of tight Active Directory integration (Azure AD / Entra ID). If you're doing enterprise security work, you'll encounter Azure constantly — it's where most corporate identities live now.

Core Services

Service What It Is
Azure AD / Entra ID Identity and access (cloud AD)
Azure VM Virtual machines
Azure Blob Storage Object storage (like S3)
Azure App Service Web app hosting
Azure Functions Serverless
Azure SQL Managed SQL databases
Azure Key Vault Secrets, certificates, keys
Azure Monitor Logging and monitoring
Azure Defender Security Center / threat detection
Azure VNet Virtual network

Azure CLI Setup

bash 
# Install
curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash

# Login
az login

# Or login with service principal
az login --service-principal -u APP_ID -p PASSWORD --tenant TENANT_ID

# Set default subscription
az account set --subscription "My Subscription"

# Current identity
az account show

Common Commands

bash 
# List resource groups
az group list --output table

# List VMs
az vm list --output table
az vm list-ip-addresses

# List storage accounts
az storage account list --output table

# List app services
az webapp list --output table

# List users (Azure AD)
az ad user list --output table

# List service principals
az ad sp list --output table

# Check role assignments
az role assignment list --output table

Azure AD / Entra ID (Security Focus)

bash 
# List all users
az ad user list --query "[].{UPN:userPrincipalName, DisplayName:displayName}" -o table

# Get user details
az ad user show --id [email protected]

# List groups
az ad group list -o table

# List members of a group
az ad group member list --group "Global Admins" -o table

# List conditional access policies (requires Graph API or portal)
az rest --method GET --url "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/identity/conditionalAccess/policies"

Storage Account Enumeration

bash 
# Check if blob containers are public
az storage container list --account-name mystorageaccount --output table

# List blobs in a container
az storage blob list --account-name mystorageaccount --container-name mycontainer --output table

# Download a blob
az storage blob download --account-name myaccount --container-name mycontainer \
  --name file.txt --file ./local_file.txt

Common Security Misconfigurations

  • Publicly accessible blob containers
  • Service principals with excessive permissions (Owner/Contributor)
  • Legacy authentication protocols enabled (bypass MFA)
  • No Conditional Access policies
  • Guest users with too many permissions
  • Management ports (RDP/SSH) open to internet
  • No Azure Defender/Defender for Cloud enabled
  • Logging not configured (no diagnostic settings)
  • Azure AD Connect sync with pass-through auth vulnerabilities

AADInternals (Azure AD Attack Tool)

powershell 
# Install
Install-Module AADInternals

# Get tenant info (no auth needed)
Get-AADIntLoginInformation -UserName [email protected]

# Enumerate users (if accessible)
Invoke-AADIntUserEnumerationAsOutsider -Domain "target.com"

See Also

  • aws-amazon-web-services-guide - AWS comparison
  • google-cloud-platform-guide - GCP
  • powershell-scripting-guide - Azure PowerShell module
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