CHAIN-073 — Stale service principal with no owner

Summary

Severity: Medium · Likelihood: Medium · Logic: ALL

Why this chain matters

A service principal exists with no listed owner AND a never-expiring credential. The original developer left years ago. The SP still has Contributor on a production subscription. No one will notice if its credential is used.

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_022	Trigger
zt_id_001	Trigger

Attack walkthrough

Step 1 — Discover the SP's client secret in an old CI log or GitHub history.

Actor: Attacker with old leak
MITRE ATT&CK: T1552.001
Enabled by: zt_id_001

Attacker gain: Valid SP auth.

Step 2 — Use SP to operate on prod; no owner gets notified of anomalous activity.

Actor: Attacker
MITRE ATT&CK: T1078
Enabled by: zt_id_022

Attacker gain: Stealth subscription-scope access.

Blast radius

Initial access	Ancient secret leak.
Max privilege	SP's RBAC assignment.
Data at risk	Prod subscription resources
Services at risk	Whatever the stale SP can touch

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.