CHAIN-196 — Azure DevOps PAT with full access + sprawled

Summary

Severity: High · Likelihood: High · Logic: ALL

Why this chain matters

An Azure DevOps PAT is created with Full Access (every scope) and an expiration of 1 year. Developers share it across pipelines, local scripts, and browsers. Any leak is a year-long backdoor to Azure DevOps Repos, Pipelines, and Variable Groups.

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 — Harvest the PAT from a dotfile or build log.

Actor: Attacker
MITRE ATT&CK: T1552.001
Enabled by: zt_id_022

Attacker gain: Full-access PAT.

Step 2 — Read secrets from variable groups; push malicious commits; trigger pipelines.

Actor: Attacker
MITRE ATT&CK: T1078
Enabled by: zt_id_001

Attacker gain: Full DevOps project control.

Blast radius

Initial access	Leaked PAT.
Max privilege	Azure DevOps organisation-wide.
Data at risk	Source code, Pipeline secrets, Build artifacts
Services at risk	Azure DevOps

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.