What began as a single compromised identity quickly expanded into an organization’s development and cloud environments. In our latest Cyberattack Series report, we examine how the Microsoft Detection and Response Team (DART)—the team that delivers Microsoft Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident Response—investigated activity by Storm-3068, a threat actor that turned a successful self-service password reset into access to Azure DevOps, development pipelines, and Kubernetes resources. By leveraging legitimate identity and cloud services rather than malware or software exploits, the threat actor established persistent access, enumerated repositories, and obtained credentials that opened a path into connected cloud infrastructure. This case highlights a growing challenge for defenders: when identities, source code, pipelines, and production environments are tightly linked, a single account compromise can provide a pathway to much broader access across the organization. Read on to learn more or access the full report.
What happened?
The intrusion began with Storm-3068 gaining access to a user account through a self-service password reset process and then taking full control of the identity by registering its own authentication methods. With persistent access established, the threat actor shifted its focus to Azure DevOps using legitimate administrative tools and automated scripts to enumerate repositories, projects, pipelines, and deployment environments.
TACTIC: Trusted pipelines were exploited
Rather than deploying malware, the threat actor modified development pipelines to collect Kubernetes credentials and expand access into cloud infrastructure.
Azure DevOps proved to be a high-value target because it sat at the intersection of identity, software development, and cloud operations. By mapping trusted deployment paths and connected resources, the threat actor was able to identify opportunities to expand beyond the initial compromise.