Cloud environments, and even more so hybrid ones, significantly expand the attack surface, rendering traditional defensive approaches ineffective against cybercriminals who skillfully exploit loopholes and vulnerabilities. Adopting an offensive perspective, by simulating realistic attacks, allows for the identification of these critical vulnerabilities before they lead to major and costly incidents.
An expanded attack surface
In platforms like Azure, AWS, or GCP, misconfigured services, such as S3 buckets or publicly accessible storage accounts, directly expose sensitive data to anyone performing a simple web scan. Meanwhile, virtual machines or applications with managed identities represent potential entry points—and potentially privileged ones—into cloud environments in the event of a compromise. Hybrid environments further exacerbate this situation: identity synchronization solutions, such as Entra Connect, create bidirectional links that transform a single on-premises domain compromise into a means of propagation to the cloud environment. Moreover, Shadow IT and interactions with SaaS applications, such as Office 365 or Teams, reduce overall visibility and facilitate insidious exposures.
Access protection mechanisms are often bypassable
Conditional access strategies represent a robust but complex security tool: insufficient configuration of these strategies can lead to bypassing them due to inadequate security coverage, the use of overly lenient conditions, and the exploitation of compromised tokens. Multi-factor authentication remains vulnerable to sophisticated phishing campaigns and session hijacking. Furthermore, lax management of IAM roles accelerates privilege escalation to critical resources. Thus, an attacker with modest initial access can quickly compromise an entire tenant, especially in the absence of a strict principle of least privilege.
Hybrid pivots: from local to cloud and vice versa
The compromise—even partial—of a local domain can lead to the collection of cloud secrets from the internal network, facilitating the spread of the attack to applications such as SharePoint, Teams, or the Azure portal, and even more generally to the entire cloud environment via the synchronization server. Conversely, obtaining sufficient privileges combined with specific configuration of the cloud environment allows the attacker to exploit join mechanisms to target Active Directory and thus propagate within local domains. These bidirectional pivots make hybrid architectures particularly vulnerable in the event of misconfiguration.
A flawed management of roles
Insufficient mastery of IAM roles multiplies attack vectors: a standard user can thus uncover seemingly benign role chains which, when combined, can lead to privilege escalation, sometimes granting the highest administrative rights within the environment. Exposed services, such as virtual machines or containers, serve as springboards for lateral movement, while hybrid environments significantly increase the possibilities of gaining access via local domains. Therefore, a persistent SQL injection into a cloud application can become the starting point of a sophisticated attack chain culminating in the compromise of the cloud environment.
Monitoring made more complex by the volume of data
The large volume of event logs generated in the cloud can obscure early warning signals: without proper configuration, the various cloud services, as well as user actions and interactions with third-party services, generate a volume of data that is difficult to analyze without a unified SIEM. Attackers exploit this noise to conceal their actions and evade detection. Effective handling of alerts and events requires proactive correlation; otherwise, incidents may only be discovered after a breach.
Defensive strategies inspired by offense
It is necessary to simulate realistic attacks using appropriate tests: in black box to assess external exposures, in grey box to simulate consistent risk scenarios through tests assumed breach, and in a white box for in-depth audits. Prioritize network segmentation by applying a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) model., the application of a zero-trust for identities, and a EDR/XDR monitoring covering all of cloud environments and related services. In addition, iterate configuration audits to establish the maturity level of your environment and thus cope with the constantly evolving threats.
Building sustainable offensive resilience
Integrate offensive security into your cloud roadmap: map hybrid pivots, strengthen identity synchronizations, and perform iterative audits. Compliance with the NIS2 directive but also the DORA regulations, When applied, this approach demands maturity; shift from a reactive posture to anticipating attackers. A proactive defense thus transforms potential vulnerabilities into solid bulwarks, protecting your critical assets in the long term.
Anticipate rather than react
Our offensive cloud security experts will help you identify, exploit, and remediate critical vulnerabilities in your environments, whether cloud, on-premises, or hybrid. Through realistic attack simulations and targeted audits, you can transform your weaknesses into opportunities for resilience. Contact us today to assess your exposure and sustainably strengthen your security posture against current threats.
