AzureHound Tool Weaponized to Map Azure and Entra ID Environments

Threat actors are increasingly weaponizing AzureHound — a legitimate penetration testing tool — to conduct reconnaissance and privilege escalation within Microsoft Azure and Entra ID environments. 

Originally designed to assist security professionals, the open-source tool has become a powerful asset for adversaries seeking to infiltrate cloud infrastructures.

“Threat actors misuse this tool to enumerate Azure resources and map potential attack paths, enabling further malicious operations,” said researchers from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42.

When Red-Team Tools Go Rogue

AzureHound, part of the BloodHound suite, was created to help penetration testers and defenders identify vulnerabilities in Active Directory and Azure configurations. 

However, threat actors have now adopted it to systematically enumerate cloud environments, revealing user hierarchies, group memberships, permissions, and potential attack paths.

Misuse of AzureHound enables attackers to visualize complex relationships within Azure ecosystems — turning legitimate security tooling into an effective reconnaissance framework. 

Both nation-state and financially motivated groups have been observed leveraging the tool in campaigns, including Iranian-backed Curious Serpens (also known as Peach Sandstorm), Void Blizzard, and Storm-0501, a ransomware affiliate.

How AzureHound Works

AzureHound operates through Microsoft Graph and Azure REST APIs, collecting identity and resource data from Entra ID and Azure environments. 

Written in Go and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux, the tool can perform discovery remotely — without needing to execute within the victim’s internal network. 

Once data is collected, AzureHound exports results in JSON format, which can then be visualized using BloodHound’s graph-based interface.

This visualization exposes relationships between accounts, roles, and permissions, enabling attackers to pinpoint misconfigurations and identify potential privilege escalation opportunities. 

What would normally require hours of manual enumeration can now be completed in minutes.

Mapping the Cloud from the Inside Out

When attackers gain initial access to a target’s Azure tenant — through phishing, stolen credentials, or compromised accounts — they deploy AzureHound to automate cloud reconnaissance. 

The tool enumerates users, service principals, key vaults, and storage accounts, exposing relationships that can lead to lateral movement or privilege escalation.

This automation drastically reduces effort and increases precision. Adversaries can identify high-value targets, such as administrators or service accounts with elevated permissions, and plan follow-up attacks accordingly. 

Because the APIs AzureHound uses are legitimate and widely deployed, detecting malicious activity requires contextual analysis of usage patterns rather than simple signature matching.

Evidence of AzureHound use includes unusual API calls, spikes in enumeration requests, or access attempts from unfamiliar IP addresses. These signals should be considered early warning indicators of internal reconnaissance activity.

Proactive Defense

To defend against the malicious use of AzureHound and similar reconnaissance tools, organizations must take a proactive, layered approach to cloud security. 

The following mitigation steps focus on strengthening identity controls, improving visibility, and reducing the attack surface within Azure and Entra ID environments. 

• Monitor for abnormal API activity: Track large-scale Microsoft Graph or Azure REST API calls that deviate from baseline patterns.
• Enable identity protection and conditional access policies: Limit risky sign-ins and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for administrative roles.
• Harden Entra ID and Azure configurations: Regularly review service principal permissions, role assignments, and external user access.
• Limit API access tokens: Apply least privilege principles by issuing scoped tokens with minimal rights.
• Implement endpoint detection and response (EDR): Detect the presence of AzureHound binaries or suspicious processes on hosts.
• Integrate Azure activity logging with SIEM tools and develop incident response playbooks: Enable real-time anomaly detection and prepare for rapid response to cloud-based reconnaissance activity.

By implementing these measures, organizations can reduce the likelihood of successful reconnaissance or privilege escalation within their cloud environments. 

Blurring the Line Between Testing and Attack

The weaponization of legitimate tools like AzureHound illustrates a trend: attackers increasingly repurpose open-source security tools for malicious use. 

As organizations migrate more workloads to the cloud, visibility and control gaps in identity infrastructure have become prime targets for exploitation.

With threat actors using legitimate red-team tools, it forces defenders to rethink how they distinguish between legitimate testing and active intrusion. 

This growing overlap between legitimate security tools and attacker tactics underscores the need for stronger cloud workload protection to secure identities, data, and applications across dynamic cloud environments.