CHAIN-146 — Azure AI Search with public access + admin API key leak

Summary

Severity: High · Likelihood: Medium · Logic: ALL

Why this chain matters

Azure AI Search service has public network access and admin API keys that never rotate. A leaked admin key grants full read/write on every index — including ability to drop indexes, add poisoned content, or export entire search corpora.

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_ai_005	Trigger
zt_id_001	Trigger

Attack walkthrough

Step 1 — Find admin API key in an app's appsettings.json / GitHub.

Actor: Attacker
MITRE ATT&CK: T1552.001
Enabled by: zt_ai_005

Attacker gain: Admin key for search service.

Step 2 — Enumerate indexes; export every document.

Actor: Attacker
MITRE ATT&CK: T1213
Enabled by: zt_id_001

Attacker gain: RAG corpus exfil + poisoning capability.

Blast radius

Initial access	Leaked admin key.
Max privilege	Full search service admin.
Data at risk	Every indexed document (RAG corpus)
Services at risk	Search service + consumers

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.