Microsoft Warns About Potential Abuse of Azure Service Tags
Microsoft has acknowledged the risks of Azure’s Service Tags feature despite disputing earlier findings. Learn more about the development and the nature of the flaw.
- Microsoft has warned users about the potential abuse of the Service Tags feature in Azure.
- An earlier report by Tenable noted that the vulnerability could be used to achieve unauthorized access to cloud resources.
Microsoft has warned users about the potential abuse of Azure Service Tags by threat actors to fake service requests to circumvent firewall rules, allowing illegitimate access to cloud resources. Microsoft acknowledged the risk faced by Azure users despite disagreeing with earlier findings made by Tenable Inc. earlier this month.
According to Tenable’s report, firewalls reliant on Azure Service Tags could be bypassed. Azure allows inbound traffic through service tags, which can be exploited through customized web requests to access resources, impersonating trusted Azure services. In such cases, Azure does not perform authentication of its own. Microsoft has stated that service tags are not intended to screen incoming traffic while acknowledging the need for additional authentication measures.
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Microsoft’s blog post on the issue stated: “Cross-tenant access is prevented by authentication and only represents an issue where authentication is not used. However, this case does highlight an inherent risk in using service tags as a single mechanism for vetting incoming network traffic. Service tags should not be treated as a security boundary and should only be used as a routing mechanism in conjunction with validation controls.”
The issue affects several Azure services, including Azure DevOps, Azure Application Insights, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Load Testing, Azure Container Registry, Azure Data Factory, Azure API Management, Azure AI Video Indexer, Azure Action Group, and Azure Chaos Studio.
Azure users have been recommended to reexamine their use of service tags and to ensure the use of additional safeguards so that trusted network traffic is authenticated for service tags.
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