Case Study: Securing Azure Cloud Infrastructure for a Global Manufacturing Leader

The Challenge

A global and one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, with over 1500 employees across the US, Europe, and Latin America relies heavily on Microsoft Azure and Office 365 for its business operations, data storage, and collaboration.

With the workforce increasingly cloud-dependent, leadership wanted assurance that their Azure and Office 365 tenant was secure against modern attack techniques. Specific concerns included:

• Misconfigurations in Azure AD and O365.
• Privilege escalation opportunities through misused roles.
• Regulatory and compliance readiness.

The company engaged Bluefire Redteam to perform an Azure cloud attack simulation that went beyond checkbox security and simulated real-world adversary behavior.

The Approach

Bluefire Redteam conducted a multi-phased engagement over two weeks:

1. External Recon & Attack Surface Testing
   • Identified a vulnerable subdomain pointing to an unclaimed third-party service.
   • Simulated email attacks to test DMARC/SPF resilience.
2. Azure AD & Microsoft Graph Penetration Testing
   • Tested token replay and OAuth abuse scenarios.
   • Verified missing Conditional Access Evaluation (CAE) controls.
   • Simulated privilege escalation attempts using low-privileged test accounts.
3. Service Principal & App Registration Abuse
   • Exposed plaintext credentials in Azure deployment history.
   • Created secrets for trusted apps to gain persistent SharePoint access.
4. Human Layer Testing
   • Ran a phishing simulation targeting nearly 1,000 employees.
   • Measured click-through rates and reporting behavior.
   • Took advantage to create a request for consent approval for a malicious application to get a cloud application administrator

The Findings

The assessment revealed multiple vulnerabilities, including:

• Critical: OAuth consent bypass, allowing escalation to Graph API scopes.
• High: Plaintext credentials in deployment logs; service principal abuse; MFA bypass due to missing CAE.
• Medium: Subdomain takeover, phishing susceptibility, anonymous blob access.

These findings highlighted systemic identity and configuration weaknesses that adversaries could use to compromise sensitive business data.

The Results

By the end of the engagement, Mustad received:

• A 39-page technical report with CVSS scoring and MITRE ATT&CK mapping.
• Access to PentestLive, Bluefire’s live vulnerability dashboard, enabling real-time tracking of remediation.
• A Cloud Security Best Practices Guide, providing actionable recommendations tailored to Azure/O365.

Impact:

• Immediate rotation of exposed credentials.
• Hardened app registration and consent policies.
• Improved phishing defenses and reporting culture.
• Clear remediation roadmap to strengthen cloud governance and compliance.

The Outcome

This engagement provided executive-level assurance to leadership while giving IT and security teams the visibility and tools to fix critical gaps before adversaries could exploit them.

By simulating real-world attacks, Bluefire Redteam helped the client move from reactive cloud security to a proactive, resilient posture, protecting both operations and reputation.

Reach out to us for a customised attack simulation, it will be worth it.