Identification and mitigation of permissions elevating attack vector

Abstract

Mitigation of attack vectors that persist elevated permissions within a computing environment. Mitigated attack vectors may be configured to respond to a trigger by generating computing resources with a built-in vulnerability. Mitigated attack vectors may elevate permissions of the computing resources to some heightened level which the malicious actor had previously gained. For example, if the malicious actor had breached a user account having administrator privileges, the attack vector may respond to the trigger by creating the virtual machine and then linking the virtual machine to a service principal having the administrator-level permissions. Left unmitigated the attack vector would enable the malicious actor to regain 'administrator-level' privileges even after access to the user account is halted. The disclosed techniques facilitate identifying and preventing the execution of attack vectors having these characteristics to prevent malicious actors from being able to persist previously obtained heightened privileges which have since been revoked.