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Introduction:
The explosion of machine and AI identities—now outnumbering human identities by a staggering 109 to 1—has created an unprecedented attack surface. With 90% of organizations suffering an identity-related breach in the past year, traditional identity and access management (IAM) tools are buckling under the pressure of non-human entities. Palo Alto Networks’ launch of Idira, a next-generation identity security platform built for the AI enterprise, aims to unify identity discovery, privilege controls, and governance to address this crisis head‑on.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the unique risks posed by machine and AI identities and how they enable lateral movement and privilege escalation.
- Implement identity discovery and least‑privilege techniques across Linux, Windows, and cloud environments.
- Apply governance frameworks and automated remediation to mitigate identity‑based attacks like Golden Ticket, Pass‑the‑Hash, and token abuse.
You Should Know:
1. Identity Discovery and Enumeration in Hybrid Environments
To secure identities, you must first find them—especially service accounts, application secrets, and machine identities that often go unmanaged. Below are commands and queries for discovering non‑human identities on Windows and Linux, plus cloud IAM role enumeration.
Step‑by‑step guide:
- Windows (Service Accounts & SPNs):
List all service accounts and their associated Service Principal Names (SPNs) – prime targets for Kerberoasting.Get-ADUser -Filter {ServicePrincipalName -ne "$null"} -Properties ServicePrincipalName | Select Name, ServicePrincipalName
Enumerate all local and domain service accounts:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service | Where-Object {$<em>.StartName -like "domain" -or $</em>.StartName -like "svc"} | Select Name, StartName
– Linux (Systemd & Cron Jobs):
Find systemd service user contexts and cron jobs running with elevated privileges.
grep -r "User=" /etc/systemd/system/ | cut -d= -f2 | sort -u
grep -r "ExecStart" /etc/systemd/system/ | grep -v ""
cat /etc/crontab | awk '{print $1,$6,$7}' | grep -v "^"
– Azure AD (Machine & AI Identities):
Use Azure CLI to list managed identities for Azure resources (AI workloads often use these).
az identity list --resource-group <rg-name> --query "[].{Name:name, ClientId:clientId, PrincipalId:principalId}"
Mitigation: Immediately disable unused or stale identities—automate via Azure AD Access Reviews or PowerShell scripts that detect accounts with no logins for 90+ days.
2. Privilege Controls: Least Privilege for AI Workloads
AI pipelines often require access to sensitive data stores, APIs, and compute clusters. Implementing least privilege means restricting tokens, secrets, and permissions to exactly what the model or service needs—nothing more.
Step‑by‑step guide for Windows & Cloud:
- Windows (Managed Service Accounts – gMSA):
Instead of hard‑coded passwords, deploy gMSAs for AI services on Windows Server.Create gMSA (run as Domain Admin) New-ADServiceAccount -Name AI-Svc01 -DNSHostName ai-svc.domain.local -PrincipalsAllowedToRetrieveManagedPassword "AI-Host-Server$" Install on the host Install-ADServiceAccount -Identity AI-Svc01
- Linux (AppArmor / SELinux for AI Containers):
Restrict container capabilities for AI inference engines (e.g., TensorFlow Serving).Deny write access to /etc and /var sudo aa-genprof /usr/bin/tensorflow_model_server Or run container with read‑only root fs docker run --read-only --cap-drop=ALL --cap-add=NET_BIND_SERVICE tf-serving
- AWS IAM (Least‑Privilege Policy for AI Service):
Use condition keys to restrict by IP, time, and resource tags.{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "s3:GetObject", "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::ai-training-bucket/", "Condition": {"IpAddress": {"aws:SourceIp": "10.0.0.0/24"}} } ] }Mitigation: Audit all identity policies using AWS IAM Access Analyzer or Azure Policy for Kubernetes to detect over‑permissioned service accounts.
3. Governance and Compliance Automation for Identity Lifecycle
Idira’s unified governance enforces policies across human and machine identities. You can automate identity validation, rotation, and revocations using CI/CD pipelines.
Step‑by‑step guide:
- Automate Secret Rotation with HashiCorp Vault:
Configure Vault’s Azure secrets engine to rotate service principal credentials every 24 hours.vault write azure/config subscription_id=... tenant_id=... vault write azure/roles/my-ai-role ttl=24h vault read azure/creds/my-ai-role generates fresh credentials
- Linux & Windows Hardening for Identity Stores:
Monitor /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow for unauthorized changes.
sudo auditctl -w /etc/passwd -p wa -k identity_change sudo aureport -k -i | grep identity_change
On Windows, enable Advanced Audit Policy for “User Account Management” (subcategory 4720-4724) and forward logs to SIEM.
– Compliance as Code with Open Policy Agent (OPA):
Enforce that no machine identity has console access in AWS.
package aws.iam
deny[bash] {
user := input.request.user
user.attached_policies[bash] == "AdministratorAccess"
msg = sprintf("AI identity %v has admin access", [user.name])
}
Mitigation: Run OPA on every Terraform apply to block non‑compliant IAM roles before deployment.
- API Security for Identity Federation (OAuth2 & JWT Hardening)
AI agents often call APIs using short‑lived JWTs. Attackers can replay or forge tokens if validation is weak. Implement robust token handling on Linux and Windows API gateways.
Step‑by‑step guide:
- JWT Validation in NGINX (Linux):
Use the nginx-http-auth-jwt module to verify signatures and claims.location /api/v1/ { auth_jwt "AI API"; auth_jwt_key_file /etc/nginx/keys/jwt.pem; Enforce issuer and audience auth_jwt_claim_set $iss claim_iss; if ($iss != "https://idira.paloaltonetworks.com") { return 403; } } - Windows: API Management with Azure APIM
Configure validate-jwt policy to check expiry, nonce, and tenant.<validate-jwt header-name="Authorization" failed-validation-httpcode="401"> <openid-config url="https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant}/v2.0/.well-known/openid-configuration" /> <required-claims> <claim name="aud" match="any"> <value>api://ai-workload</value> </claim> </required-claims> </validate-jwt> - Token Binding & Replay Prevention:
On Linux, use `mod_security` with `SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Authorization` to block repeated tokens within a sliding window.
Mitigation: Always enforce short token lifetimes (≤ 15 minutes for AI agents) and rotate signing keys weekly.
- Cloud Hardening for Identity Stores (Azure AD & AWS IAM)
Identity stores themselves must be hardened against compromise. Focus on Conditional Access, Privileged Identity Management (PIM), and anomaly detection.
Step‑by‑step guide:
- Azure AD Conditional Access for Machine Identities:
Create a policy that blocks all machine identities from interactive login unless from a trusted IPv4 range.New-AzureADMSConditionalAccessPolicy -Name "BlockMachineInteractive" -Conditions @{ Users = @{ IncludeRoles = @("all") } Applications = @{ IncludeApplications = @("All") } SignInRisk = @{ UserRiskLevels = @("high") } Locations = @{ ExcludeLocations = @("trusted_ip_range") } } -GrantControls @{ BuiltInControls = @("block") } - AWS IAM Access Analyzer for Unintended Access:
Enable to discover identity policies that grant access to external principals.aws accessanalyzer create-analyzer --analyzer-name "IdiraAnalyzer" --type ACCOUNT aws accessanalyzer list-findings --analyzer-arn arn:aws:access-analyzer:...
- Just‑in‑Time Privilege Elevation (Linux/Windows):
Use `sudo` with timestamp_timeout=0 for AI operators, or Windows JEA (Just Enough Administration) to limit cmdlets./etc/sudoers.d/ai-operators %ai-ops ALL=(ALL:ALL) /usr/bin/systemctl restart ai-service, /usr/bin/journalctl -u ai-service Defaults:%ai-ops timestamp_timeout=0
Mitigation: Enforce MFA on all cloud identity consoles and require PIM activation for any role that can modify IAM.
- Vulnerability Exploitation and Mitigation (Golden Ticket, Pass‑the‑Hash, Token Abuse)
AI identities are often service accounts with unconstrained delegation or NTLM hashes cached on many hosts. Attackers can compromise one machine and impersonate any AI service.
Step‑by‑step guide: mitigate common attacks
- Mitigating Golden Ticket (Kerberos):
Regularly rotate the KRBTGT account password twice (to invalidate existing tickets).On Windows Domain Controller $NewPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "RandomStr0ngP@ss" -AsPlainText -Force Set-ADAccountPassword -Identity krbtgt -NewPassword $NewPassword -Reset Repeat after 24 hours, then force all services to rejoin domain
- Mitigating Pass‑the‑Hash (PtH)
Disable NTLMv1 and restrict NTLM on all servers hosting AI workloads.Windows Group Policy: Network security: Restrict NTLM: Incoming NTLM traffic = Deny all Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa" -Name "RestrictNTLMIncoming" -Value 2
On Linux (Samba/CIFS), enforce Kerberos only in
/etc/samba/smb.conf: `ntlm auth = no`
– API Token Abuse – Offline Detection
Use `jq` and `date` to detect expired tokens still being used.Extract JWT expiration and compare with current time jwt_payload=$(echo $TOKEN | cut -d. -f2 | base64 -d) exp=$(echo $jwt_payload | jq -r '.exp') if [ $(date +%s) -gt $exp ]; then echo "TOKEN EXPIRED – POSSIBLE REPLAY"; fi
Mitigation: Implement token binding (Proof‑of‑Possession) using DPoP (RFC 9449) for all AI API calls.
What Undercode Say:
- Key Takeaway 1: The 109:1 ratio of machine to human identities demands a paradigm shift—identity security can no longer be an afterthought. Idira’s unified approach is a necessary response to attack techniques like Kerberoasting, PtH, and token replay that specifically target non‑human accounts.
- Key Takeaway 2: Effective mitigation requires both platform‑level controls (gMSAs, Vault, OPA) and continuous discovery. The commands and policies outlined above provide a pragmatic starting point for hardening AI identities across Linux, Windows, and cloud—closing the gap between stat and reality.
Prediction:
By 2028, AI‑born identity breaches will overtake human‑phishing as the primary initial access vector. Platforms like Idira will evolve into autonomous identity threat detection and response (ITDR) systems, using behavioral ML to spot anomalous token usage across millions of machine identities. Organizations that fail to adopt unified identity governance will face crippling outages and data theft, as AI agents become the new “shadow IT” with privileged, unmonitored access. Expect regulatory mandates for machine identity lifecycle management and quarterly secret‑less authentication audits within the next 24 months.
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Reported By: Dipak Golechha – Hackers Feeds
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