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11/08/2026 3:19 pm
TL;DR: Azure challenges have been added to Cloudfoxable, extending its hands-on training environment beyond AWS and into identity-driven privilege escalation paths, according to Bishop Fox, with 1,350 users having tried the platform and only 17 completing every challenge. The shift matters because Azure control failures often hinge on relationships between users, service principals, managed identities, and role assignments rather than isolated misconfigurations.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Bishop Fox: Cloudfoxable now includes Azure challenges
By the numbers:
- Since its release, 1,350 users have tried to solve the Cloudfoxable challenges, but only 17 have solved every challenge so far.
- Only 17 have solved every challenge so far.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams test Azure privilege escalation paths?
A: Security teams should test Azure privilege escalation by tracing how identities, role assignments, and inherited scopes combine into reachable actions.
Q: Why do Azure environments often create hidden escalation risk?
A: Azure environments often create hidden escalation risk because identity relationships are distributed across users, service principals, managed identities, and role assignments.
Q: What do teams get wrong about cloud identity security?
A: Teams often assume that strong application security controls automatically neutralise the risk created by shared infrastructure.
Practitioner guidance
- Map Azure identity relationships as an attack graph Document how users, service principals, managed identities, subscriptions, and role assignments connect.
- Review workload identities for privilege inheritance Inspect managed identities and service principals for permissions that were added for deployment convenience and never reduced.
- Test escalation paths in a safe Azure lab Use a controlled environment to rehearse discovery, abuse, and containment steps before reviewing production access.
What's in the full article
Bishop Fox's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step deployment flow for the Azure challenge environment inside a personal subscription
- Challenge-by-challenge walkthrough cues for exploring the misconfigurations in the Azure track
- Additional tooling references for Azure identity exploration, including Cirro, ROADTools, and PowerZure
- Practical guidance on how the Azure section differs from the AWS version in structure and difficulty
👉 Read Bishop Fox's Cloudfoxable Azure challenges post →
Azure cloud challenge labs: what identity teams should learn?
Explore further
11/08/2026 3:31 pm
Identity graph thinking is now a core cloud security skill, not a specialist extra. Azure environments fail in ways that are difficult to spot if teams only review permissions one object at a time. The meaningful unit is the relationship between identities, scopes, and delegated actions. Practitioners should treat identity paths as attack surfaces and not as administrative trivia.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Our research shows 85% of organisations lack full visibility into third-party vendors connected via OAuth apps, according to The State of Non-Human Identity Security.
- Only 1.5 out of 10 organisations are highly confident in their ability to secure NHIs, compared to nearly 1 in 4 for securing human identities.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should organisations validate Azure IAM maturity?
A: Organisations should validate Azure IAM maturity by checking whether teams can explain and reproduce real abuse paths, not just describe policies. If a lab scenario can surprise the team, the governance model is still incomplete. Mature programmes can connect identity design, permission scope, and lifecycle control.
👉 Read our full editorial: Cloudfoxable’s Azure challenges sharpen identity-driven cloud escalation
