Reviewing common cleartext data stores

In this section, we will review common areas within Azure that are available to the Reader role where cleartext passwords can be stored. These may be intentional cleartext passwords, but for the most part, these data stores will contain credentials that are accidentally exposed.

One important thing to note is that some credentials are meant to be in cleartext. As you will later see, there are specific services in Azure where cleartext passwords are expected and utilized as part of the service. This may seem like a dangerous practice, and it is certainly something that we will make use of as an attacker, but with proper authorization controls around the credentials, they can be safely used by some services.

It is worth mentioning that Microsoft has improved in this area by requiring read/write permissions or more explicit permissions to be able to read configurations that could store sensitive information that gives access to data. Here...