CHAIN-067 — Certificate-based SP auth with long-lived cert

Summary

Severity: High · Likelihood: Medium · Logic: ALL

Why this chain matters

A service principal authenticates via a 10-year x.509 certificate. If the private key leaves the HSM once, there is no practical revocation. The SP holds Azure RBAC roles at subscription scope, making the leaked cert a decade-long backdoor.

Component rules

This chain fires when its trigger conditions are met by the following rules. Click any rule to see its detection logic and compliance mappings.

Rule ID	Role
zt_id_001	Trigger
zt_id_003	Trigger

Attack walkthrough

Step 1 — Exfiltrate the private key from a misconfigured Key Vault or developer laptop.

Actor: Attacker
MITRE ATT&CK: T1552.004
Enabled by: zt_id_001

Attacker gain: Valid certificate for SP auth.

Step 2 — Authenticate to Azure AD using the certificate; persist access for the cert's remaining lifetime.

Actor: Attacker
MITRE ATT&CK: T1078
Enabled by: zt_id_003

Attacker gain: Long-lived subscription-scope RBAC.

Blast radius

Initial access	Key material leak.
Max privilege	SP's RBAC roles.
Data at risk	Every resource the SP can reach
Services at risk	Azure RBAC

How the logic works

The chain fires only when every rule above has at least one finding in the current scan. Missing any one rule breaks the chain — so remediating any single step disrupts the attack path.