Wildcard permissions are access rules that grant broad action or resource matching, often using symbols such as asterisks. They simplify configuration but increase blast radius, so defenders should review them for unnecessary scope, especially on administrative identities, service accounts, and automation roles.
What wildcard permissions actually do
Wildcard permissions are a convenience pattern in access control, they let one rule cover many actions or resources at once by matching broad patterns such as prefixes, suffixes, or symbols like *. That reduces configuration effort, but it also makes the permission boundary less precise.
In practice, wildcard rules are most attractive where admins need speed and scale, especially in cloud IAM, privileged tooling, service accounts, and automation roles. The security trade-off is straightforward: the broader the match, the more likely the rule grants more authority than the operator intended.
Why wildcard permissions become dangerous
The core danger is overreach. A single wildcard can silently include new actions, newly created resources, or future API methods that were not explicitly reviewed when the policy was written. That makes it easy for permission scope to drift beyond the original business need.
Wildcard permissions also reduce the readability of access reviews. When reviewers cannot tell exactly what a rule covers, they are more likely to miss privilege creep, inherited access, or a hidden path to sensitive data and administrative functions.
Where wildcard permissions show up most often
These rules appear in IAM policies, cloud permissions, application authorisation layers, command-line allowlists, and service-to-service automation. They are especially common in environments that favour fast provisioning over tightly enumerated access.
The risk is highest when wildcard access is attached to identities that can do real damage if misused, such as administrative users, long-lived service accounts, deployment pipelines, or machine identities that touch production systems. Broad rules in those contexts can turn a small mistake into broad system-wide exposure.
For a deeper treatment of effective permissions and rightsizing in cloud environments, see Cloud PAM and CIEM Guide.
How defenders should review and right-size them
Wildcard permissions should be treated as exceptions that need justification, not as a default pattern. The right question is not whether a wildcard is convenient, but whether the same outcome can be achieved with narrower resource patterns, explicit action lists, or time-bound elevation.
Reviewers should trace each wildcard rule back to an owner, a business purpose, and an expected usage pattern. If the rule exists to support automation or temporary administration, it should be paired with strong monitoring and, where possible, just-in-time access rather than standing broad privilege.
Wildcard-heavy environments often need complementary controls such as permission analysis, access review, and privilege minimisation. NHIMG’s Privileged Access Management Guide explains how to reduce standing privilege, while the Just-in-Time Access and Zero Standing Privilege Guide shows how to replace persistent broad access with temporary elevation.
Risk and Threat Considerations
Wildcard permissions can expand the blast radius of a compromised identity or a mistaken automation step, because one broad rule may authorize far more than the operator intended. They are especially risky when the matching pattern reaches sensitive administrative actions, secrets, or production resources.
Failure mechanism: An attacker or a buggy workflow abuses the broad match to perform actions that were never meant to be included, or inherits access to newly created resources that were not individually reviewed.
Impact: The result can be privilege escalation, unauthorized data access, destructive changes, lateral movement, or long-lived exposure that survives routine change management.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 addresses the attack and risk surface, while CIS Controls v8 and NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-05 — Overprivileged NHI | Wildcard permissions often create excessive non-human access scope. |
| NHI-08 — Environment Isolation | Broad matching can cross environment boundaries and expand blast radius. | |
| Recommendation — Remove broad wildcard grants from NHI roles and replace them with explicit least-privilege permissions. Separate environment-scoped permissions so wildcard patterns cannot span dev, test, and production. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-6 — Access Control Management | Wildcard permissions are an access-control design and review problem. |
| Recommendation — Review and tighten broad permission patterns to enforce least privilege. | ||
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | AC-6 — Least Privilege | Wildcard permissions directly affect how much access an identity is granted. |
| IA-5 — Authenticator Management | Wildcard permissions on privileged identities magnify the impact of credential misuse. | |
| Recommendation — Minimise wildcard access and restrict each role to the minimum actions it needs. Limit broad permission scopes on identities whose credentials must be protected and rotated. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
What to watch for: Treat wildcard permissions as a review hotspot whenever they appear in admin roles, service accounts, CI/CD roles, or identities with access to secrets and production systems. Broad patterns that were once harmless can become dangerous as infrastructure, APIs, and resource names evolve.
Governance implication: Make every wildcard rule individually owned, documented, and periodically recertified. If the rule cannot be explained in one sentence without hand-waving, it is probably too broad for durable use.