This post is part of a small blog series covering common Entra ID security findings observed during real-world assessments. Each article explores selected findings in more detail to provide a clearer understanding of the underlying risks and practical implications. What Is Privileged Identity Management? Privileged Identity Management (PIM) is a service in Microsoft Entra ID […]
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Offensive Defense
In part 2 of our 4-part series on common Entra ID security findings, we show how seemingly harmless group configurations can be abused to bypass security controls and gain high privileges.
The post shows scenarios where insufficiently protected groups are used to:
weaken Conditional Access protections for administrators
enable privilege escalation through PIM for Groups
grant privileged access to Azure resources, leading to full compromise
We also show how to detect these issues in practice using EntraFalcon and how to mitigate them.
This post is part of a small blog series covering common Entra ID security findings observed during real-world assessments. Each article explores selected findings in more detail to support a clearer understanding of the underlying risks and practical implications. Introduction In the vast majority of tenants we review, there are enterprise applications that originate from […]
We just released a big update for EntraFalcon. The new Security Findings Report adds an interactive HTML overview to EntraFalcon that consolidates tenant settings and object-based checks into structured security findings. Over 60 checks, graphical charts, filtering, export, and more options are now available.
While not new, a self-referencing LNK file in combination with winget configuration instructions can be a viable initial access payload for environments where the Microsoft Store is not disabled.
Last year we wrote about a Windows 11 vulnerability that allowed a regular user to gain administrative privileges. Not long after, Manuel Kiesel from Cyllective AG reached out to us after stumbling across a seemingly similar issue while investigating the Lenovo Vantage application. It turns out that the exploit primitive for arbitrary file deletion to gain SYSTEM privileges no longer works on current Windows machines.
Over the course of 2025, we performed several hundred security assessments for our clients. In each of these, security analysts must understand a new environment and often work with unfamiliar technologies. Even for well-known technologies, things change rapidly. Quick learning and adaptability are essential skills.
To keep our security analysts sharp and up to date, we regularly attend security conferences, external courses and trainings but also organize internal sessions. It has become a tradition for us to spend the first week of January learning new things, starting the year improving our know-how.
NTLM is the legacy authentication protocol in Windows environment. In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to write on this blog about NTLM Relaying to DCOM (twice), to AD CS (ESC11) and to MSSQL. Today I will look back on relaying to HTTPS and how the tooling improved.
The gRPC framework, and by extension gRPC-Web, is based on a binary data serialization format. This poses a challenge for penetration testers when intercepting browser to server communication with tools such as Burp Suite.
This project was initially started after we unexpectedly encountered gRPC-Web during a penetration test a few years ago. It is important to have adequate tooling available when this technology appears. Today, we are releasing our Burp Suite extension bRPC-Web in the hope that it will prove useful to others during their assessments.
Something a bit wild happened recently: A rival of LockBit decided to hack LockBit. Or, to put this into ransomware-parlance: LockBit got a post-paid pentest. It is unclear if a ransomware negotiation took place between the two, but if it has, it was not successful. The data was leaked.
Now, let’s be honest: the dataset is way too small to make any solid statistical claims. Having said that, let’s make some statistical claims!
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