Huntress demonstrated that a standard Microsoft 365 user with no admin privileges can be escalated to Global Administrator in under six minutes by exploiting common identity misconfigurations — specifically, an over-privileged service account owning an enterprise application, lack of MFA enforcement, and standard users being permitted to access the Azure portal. Analysis of 12,000+ M365 tenants revealed that over 60% were missing at least half of recommended security controls, with MFA gaps, over-privileged accounts, and admin restriction failures being the most prevalent issues. The article argues that continuous, automated identity posture management is essential because configuration drift creates exploitable windows far shorter than the 24-hour scan cycles of traditional tools.
M365 privilege escalation
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It Took Five Minutes to Turn a Standard User Into a Global Admin