The Bottom Line: Confused-Deputy flaws in major cloud platforms enable attackers to escalate to administrative privileges by circumventing access controls.
Security researchers have documented that Confused-Deputy vulnerabilities in Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure remain exploitable. These vulnerabilities allow attackers to gain administrative rights and bypass access control mechanisms of cloud providers.
Confused-Deputy vulnerabilities are a class of flaws that abuse cross-account or cross-service mechanisms in cloud environments. An attacker can leverage a legitimate service relationship to obtain unauthorized access to resources that do not directly belong to the attacker.
The fact that such gaps persist in established platforms like Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure demonstrates significant risk for enterprise environments. CISOs must assume that threat actors will operationally exploit these publicly documented attack vectors — particularly against organizations with complex multi-cloud architectures and cross-account configurations.
The impact is far-reaching: a successful Confused-Deputy exploit can immediately grant an attacker administrative control over critical cloud infrastructure without prior authentication or compromising known credentials. This makes these vulnerabilities high-risk factors in the organization’s cloud security posture.
CISOs should systematically review their cloud IAM policies, especially cross-account trust relationships and assume-role configurations. Least privilege principles and continuous monitoring of IAM activities are fundamental to mitigation.
Source: www.darkreading.com · Published 27 July 2026
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