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POCFORGE RESEARCH 16 MIN READTECHNICAL DEEP DIVE OFFENSIVE SECURITY

Cloud IAM Attack Paths: From a Low-Privilege Identity to Sensitive Data

A practical cloud penetration-testing methodology for tracing identity relationships, role assumptions, permissions and resource exposure into a measurable attack path.

Cloud security reviews often produce long lists of permissions and configuration observations. An offensive assessment asks a different question: which identities can reach which sensitive resources through which trust relationships? That shift turns configuration review into attack-path analysis.

Core testing principleDo not stop at “this role has permission X.” Trace whether a real principal can obtain that role, exercise the permission and reach a sensitive resource within the application’s threat model.

1. Identify entry identities

Start with realistic footholds: application workloads, CI/CD identities, developer roles, support accounts, exposed access keys and federated identities. Build an inventory of where credentials originate and what they can call.

2. Map trust relationships

Role assumption, workload identity federation, cross-account trust and service-to-service permissions create edges in the attack graph. Review both sides of the relationship: who can assume the role and what the assumed role can do.

Edge Test Question
Identity → role Assume/attach permissions Can the principal obtain the role?
Role → resource Action/resource pair What can it actually access?
Account → account Cross-account trust Is the trust broader than intended?
Workload → secret Runtime identity Can the workload retrieve sensitive material?

3. Look for privilege transitions

Common transitions include modifying a role or policy, passing a role to a compute service, changing a workload identity, reading a deployment secret or using an overly broad service role. The exact mechanisms differ across cloud providers, so document the provider, service and permission semantics in the finding.

Attack-path builder

Start with the lowest-privilege identity and determine whether each transition is actually authorized.

4. Validate the resource boundary

Prove access against a dedicated test object or synthetic secret where possible. The goal is to show that the identity path crosses a security boundary, not to retrieve production data unnecessarily.

5. Quantify blast radius

Document what the compromised identity could read, modify, delete or delegate. Separate theoretical permissions from verified reachable actions. This distinction makes remediation more actionable and prevents inflated severity claims.

6. Reduce the path

  1. Apply least privilege to workload identities.
  2. Constrain role trust policies to specific principals.
  3. Remove unused permissions and stale identities.
  4. Separate administrative and runtime roles.
  5. Protect secrets with identity-aware access controls.
  6. Monitor role assumptions and sensitive permission changes.
  7. Review cross-account and federation boundaries regularly.

Assessment references

Use the cloud provider’s IAM documentation alongside your organization’s threat model. The important output is an evidence-backed path from entry identity to sensitive resource—not a generic list of permissions.