Because IAM is the control plane for the services that decide where traffic goes. If a credential can alter routing rules, it can redirect legitimate requests to attacker-controlled infrastructure or return failures instead of forwarding traffic. The more services that identity can touch, the wider the blast radius when it is misused.
Why over-privileged cloud identities can reroute traffic
Cloud routing, load balancing, DNS, API gateway, and service mesh decisions are often made through IAM-authorised control plane calls, not only through network appliances. If an identity can change those controls, it can divert legitimate requests, break forwarding paths, or point traffic at infrastructure the defender did not intend to trust. The risk grows when the same identity can also read secrets, modify policies, or operate across accounts.
That is why this is not just “too much access”, it is access to the path selection logic itself. A compromised credential with route, policy, or listener permissions can turn a valid service into a traffic redirection point. In practice, hijackability depends on which actions the identity can perform, how quickly those changes propagate, and whether downstream services verify the target independently.
Where the abuse path becomes real
Traffic hijacking usually starts with one of three control-plane mistakes: permissions that allow route changes, permissions that allow security or load-balancing rule edits, or permissions that allow trust and federation changes that indirectly alter where requests land. Once the attacker can change the destination, they can redirect users to a lookalike endpoint, intercept service-to-service calls, or create failure conditions that force retries through a controlled path.
Over-privilege matters because cloud platforms often expose many equivalent ways to reach the same outcome. An identity that can edit forwarding rules, attach policies, update DNS, change target groups, or assume a more powerful role can achieve the same end through different APIs. That flexibility is useful for operators, but it also widens the attack surface when standing access is broader than the task requires. The Cloud PAM and CIEM Guide is useful here because it focuses on effective permissions and cloud privilege escalation paths, not just nominal role names.
One of the clearest patterns is privilege that looks harmless until it is combined with another right. For example, edit access to a routing resource becomes far more dangerous when the same principal can read the credentials or certificates needed by the target service. The Service Account Security Guide helps frame that combination, because service-account scope, ownership, and lifecycle are often what turn a small permission into a broad traffic-control problem.
What strong governance needs to cover
Effective control is not just “review access”, it is narrowing which identities can change traffic-bearing resources, separating read and modify paths, and making emergency elevation temporary. The strongest boundary is usually one that keeps routine operators from touching both the workload and the routing decision at the same time. The Privileged Access Management Guide supports that separation by centring least privilege, JIT access, and session controls for privileged actions.
For cloud environments specifically, entitlement sprawl is often the hidden failure mode. Teams grant broad IAM permissions for convenience, then later discover that the same role can alter load balancers, API gateways, DNS, or cross-account trust. The Cloud PAM and CIEM Guide and the Just-in-Time Access and Zero Standing Privilege Guide both reinforce the operational point: standing access to traffic controls should be the exception, not the default.
Traffic hijacking also becomes more plausible when over-privileged identities are reused across environments or services. A credential that can touch production routing should not also be valid in lower environments or for unrelated administrative tasks. That separation reduces the chance that a low-value compromise becomes a path into traffic redirection. The Ultimate Guide to NHIs is relevant for the underlying overprivilege and reuse problem, because the same control principle applies whether the identity is human or non-human.
Risk and Threat Considerations
Once an identity can alter routing, the compromise is no longer limited to data access. An attacker can quietly intercept requests, downgrade availability, or create selective failures that are harder to spot than a full outage. That makes over-privilege especially dangerous in cloud control planes, where a single role can affect many services at once.
Failure mechanism: Excessive permissions let a compromised credential modify routing, forwarding, trust, or target configuration, which changes where legitimate traffic is sent without needing to break the traffic itself.
Impact: Organisations can lose confidentiality, integrity, and availability at the same time, with redirected requests, service disruption, and a much larger blast radius than a normal account compromise.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
CIS Controls v8 and NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 set the technical controls, while ISO/IEC 27001:2022 defines the regulatory obligations.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-5 — Account Management | Over-privileged cloud identities are an account control problem affecting access scope. |
| Recommendation — Restrict and review account privileges that can change traffic-bearing cloud resources. | ||
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | AC-6 — Least Privilege | Traffic hijacking risk comes from excess permissions on cloud control-plane actions. |
| IA-5 — Authenticator Management | Compromised cloud identities often enable traffic abuse through stolen or long-lived credentials. | |
| AC-2 — Account Management | Cloud routing abuse is reduced when privileged accounts are tightly governed and reviewed. | |
| Recommendation — Limit each identity to the minimum routing and policy actions it needs. Rotate and protect credentials that can modify routing or trust relationships. Inventory and recertify identities that can alter traffic paths or service trust. | ||
| ISO/IEC 27001:2022 | A.5.15 — Access control | Cloud traffic redirection depends on access rights to routing and trust controls. |
| Recommendation — Apply role and permission limits to all traffic-affecting cloud resources. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
What to prioritise: Treat every identity that can change routing, DNS, gateways, load balancers, or cross-account trust as high impact. Those permissions should be inventoried separately from ordinary admin access because they can affect many downstream services at once.
What to verify: Confirm that no routine operator role can both modify traffic controls and access the secrets or trust relationships behind the target service. If it can, the control plane is too wide and the identity needs to be split or constrained.
Decision rule: If a credential can redirect production traffic, give it time-bound access, session visibility, and a narrow task scope, then remove standing privilege from the default operating model.
Practitioner takeaway: Traffic hijacking becomes possible when IAM scope reaches the routing decision itself, so the real control objective is to keep path-changing privileges rare, temporary, and independently reviewable.