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Introduction:
In the world of Identity and Access Management (IAM), most security teams operate with a “Joiner/Mover/Leaver” framework. While “Joiner” (onboarding) and “Leaver” (offboarding) processes are often heavily scrutinized and automated, the “Mover” stage—where employees change roles internally—remains a critical blind spot. When an employee shifts from Sales to Marketing, or from Developer to Project Manager, organizations frequently grant new permissions while neglecting to revoke old ones. This creates privilege creep, where users accumulate excessive rights over time, violating the Zero Trust principle of least privilege and creating significant internal security risks.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the concept of “privilege creep” and its role in insider threat scenarios.
- Learn how to audit existing user entitlements to identify orphaned or excessive permissions.
- Implement a structured access recertification process for organizational role changes.
You Should Know:
- The Anatomy of a Mover: Identifying Accumulated Risk
The core issue with the mover stage is the “additive” nature of access management. When an employee changes roles, the IT department or IAM team often receives a ticket to grant new access (new folders, new applications, new security groups). However, unless there is a specific, automated trigger to remove the old access, it persists. This is rarely due to malice, but rather a process gap—”We didn’t want to break their ability to look at old data” or “We forgot they were still in that group.”
To identify this risk manually, security administrators need to conduct user entitlement reviews. This involves comparing a user’s current access against their current job role (Role-Based Access Control – RBAC).
- Linux/macOS Auditing (for file system access): If legacy access involves network shares mounted on Linux systems, you can audit user permissions using
getfacl.Check the access control list for a specific directory to see who has access getfacl /mnt/legacy_sales_data Recursively list ACLs for a user's home directory or shared drive to map permissions find /shared_department_drives -type d -exec getfacl {} \; | grep -B 10 "user:john.doe" -
Windows Auditing (Active Directory): PowerShell is the primary tool for auditing AD group memberships to spot creep.
Check all groups a specific user is a member of (including nested groups) Get-ADUser -Identity "john.doe" -Properties MemberOf | Select-Object -ExpandProperty MemberOf Find users who are members of high-privilege groups (e.g., Domain Admins) but haven't logged in recently (potential dormant/mover risk) Search-ADAccount -AccountInactive -TimeSpan 30.00:00:00 -UsersOnly | Where-Object { $_.DistinguishedName -like "CN=Domain Admins," }
2. The Zero Trust Recertification Workflow
To combat privilege creep, organizations must treat internal mobility as a “reset” event, not a “grant” event. The following step-by-step guide outlines a secure access recertification process for an employee moving from Role A (e.g., Finance) to Role B (e.g., Human Resources).
- Initiate the Transfer: HR system triggers an IGA (Identity Governance and Administration) ticket or workflow.
- Temporal Suspension (Optional but Recommended): Place the user’s access from Role A into a “grace period” or temporary disable state immediately upon role change. This prevents new activity while allowing managers to review needs.
- Generate Entitlement Report: Export the user’s current access. This includes:
– AD Group Memberships
– SaaS Application assignments (Salesforce, Slack, etc.)
– VPN/Network access policies
– File server permissions (NTFS/Share/NFS)
4. Manager Attestation (Role A): Send the list of Role A permissions to the previous manager. Ask: “Does the user still need any of this to support their old team?” Set a short deadline (e.g., 5 days). If no response, access is queued for revocation.
5. Manager Attestation (Role B): The new manager requests new access based on a role template (RBAC). This ensures new access is justified, not just blanket-copied from a predecessor.
6. Automated Reconciliation: The IAM system (like SailPoint IIQ, Okta, or Entra ID Identity Governance) runs a script to remove any access not explicitly approved by either manager.
3. Auditing Entitlements with Open Source Tools
If you don’t have a full IGA suite like SailPoint, you can use command-line tools to audit your environment for signs of privilege creep. Here’s a practical approach using Linux tools to audit a mixed environment.
- Scenario: A developer (Sarah) moved to a DevOps role 6 months ago. She still has `sudo` access on old production web servers and SSH keys deployed to those servers.
- Audit SSH Key Access:
On a central management server, check authorized_keys for users who shouldn't be there Loop through servers and check for Sarah's key for server in $(cat old_web_servers.txt); do echo "Checking $server..." ssh $server "grep 'sarah@company' /home//.ssh/authorized_keys" done
- Audit Sudoers Files:
Check if Sarah has any sudo rights on legacy systems grep -r "sarah" /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.d/
- Audit Windows Privileges via PowerShell (for SQL or File Servers):
Check for specific user privileges on a SQL Server (using SQL module) Get-SqlLogin -ServerInstance "LEGACY_SQL_SERVER" | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "sarah" } Check if Sarah has local admin rights on a set of servers (Invoke-Command) $servers = Get-Content "servers.txt" Invoke-Command -ComputerName $servers -ScriptBlock { Get-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "sarah" } }
4. Enforcing Least Privilege with Just-In-Time (JIT) Access
A modern mitigation against privilege creep is to move away from standing privileges entirely. If a user does not have permanent access, it cannot accumulate.
- Azure AD (Entra ID) PIM (Privileged Identity Management): Configure roles to require activation.
- Step 1: Assign the user to the role as “Eligible,” not “Active.”
- Step 2: Require approval and a justification for activation.
- Step 3: Set a time limit (e.g., 4 hours) for the role to auto-expire.
- Linux `sudo` with Timeouts: Configure `sudoers` to limit the time a user holds root privileges without re-authenticating.
In /etc/sudoers, add timestamp_timeout Defaults env_reset,timestamp_timeout=5 This means sudo access will be valid for only 5 minutes after authentication
5. Automating Cleanup: PowerShell for AD Hygiene
To actually fix the “mover” problem, you need to automate the cleanup of the old role. Here is a PowerShell script concept for offboarding a user’s old department group memberships based on a defined “Role Profile.”
<
.SYNOPSIS
Removes a user from all security groups associated with a specific "Old Role" profile.
>
Define parameters
$Username = "john.doe"
$OldRoleGroups = @("SG_Sales_Read", "SG_Sales_Write", "VPN_Sales_Team", "FS_Share_Sales_RW")
Write-Host "Removing user $Username from legacy groups..." -ForegroundColor Yellow
foreach ($Group in $OldRoleGroups) {
try {
Check if user is in the group
$membership = Get-ADGroupMember -Identity $Group | Where-Object {$<em>.SamAccountName -eq $Username}
if ($membership) {
Remove-ADGroupMember -Identity $Group -Members $Username -Confirm:$false
Write-Host "[bash] $Username from $Group" -ForegroundColor Green
} else {
Write-Host "[bash] $Username not in $Group" -ForegroundColor Gray
}
} catch {
Write-Host "[bash] Failed to process $Group : $</em>" -ForegroundColor Red
}
}
6. API Security and the Mover Problem
Privilege creep isn’t limited to human users. Service accounts and API keys used by developers also suffer from the “mover” problem. When a developer moves teams, their personal access tokens often remain valid against old APIs and repositories.
- Mitigation Strategy: Implement token rotation and short-lived credentials.
- AWS IAM Example: Instead of granting a developer long-term access keys, use AWS Identity Center (SSO) to grant temporary credentials based on the user’s current group membership. When their group changes, their access to the old AWS account automatically expires.
AWS CLI command to assume a role for temporary credentials aws sts assume-role --role-arn "arn:aws:iam::OLD_ACCOUNT_ID:role/DeveloperRole" --role-session-name "temp-session"
7. Cloud Hardening: Removing Orphaned IAM Roles
In cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP), a “mover” might leave behind IAM roles that trust their old user account, or they might have launched resources under their personal namespace.
- AWS IAM Access Advisor: Use the AWS CLI to check when specific IAM users or roles last accessed a service. This helps identify credentials that are no longer needed post-move.
List services a user has accessed and when aws iam generate-service-last-accessed-details --arn arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/old_employee aws iam get-service-last-accessed-details --job-id <JobId>
- Azure Resource Graph: Query for all resources created by a specific user and re-evaluate ownership if they have moved teams.
Search-AzGraph -Query "resources | where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/virtualmachines' and createdBy == '[email protected]'"
What Undercode Say:
- Key Takeaway 1: Internal mobility is a greater identity threat than most external breaches because it bypasses typical security gates. If you only focus on onboarding and offboarding, you are ignoring 60% of the identity lifecycle.
- Key Takeaway 2: The solution is not just better technology (IGA tools), but better process. Access should be ephemeral. You must design systems where access expires by default and must be re-requested, rather than persisting forever.
Privilege creep is the slow accumulation of digital debt. It creates a sprawling attack surface where every ex-employee, former contractor, or relocated team member represents a potential entry point for an attacker or a source of data leakage. By treating role changes as “termination and re-hire” events—or at least enforcing a rigorous recertification cadence—organizations can drastically shrink their attack surface. The core principle of Zero Trust—”never trust, always verify”—must apply to internal users just as stringently as it applies to external threats. In the end, securing the mover stage isn’t just about compliance; it’s about maintaining digital hygiene in a fluid workforce.
Prediction:
As AI-driven IGA tools mature, we will see a shift from periodic (quarterly) access reviews to continuous access certification. Machine learning algorithms will analyze user behavior and role changes in real-time, automatically flagging and revoking anomalous access without human intervention. The future of IAM will be predictive, not reactive—automatically provisioning and de-provisioning access before the user even finishes their first week in a new role, effectively eradicating the “mover” gap entirely.
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Reported By: Hrishik Gyawali – Hackers Feeds
Extra Hub: Undercode MoN
Basic Verification: Pass ✅
