01 / Attack path
How the boundary is crossed
A support agent is retired but its cloud role remains bound to an active credential.
- 01Lower-trust input
- 02Attempted instruction
- 03Protected action
- 04Enforced decision
02 / Containment
Where bounded authority limits the effect
Join ownership and deployment state to token use; suspend orphaned principals and trace surviving dependent grants.
03 / Failure and evidence
The attacker’s opportunity and the defender’s record
Exploit condition
No team can attest to the identity, yet the API still trusts it.
Evidence to retain
Owner status, last use, suspension, child-grant invalidation and denied follow-up.
04 / Canonical scope
Why this reference stands alone
NHI management owns governance; this threat reference owns the orphan condition and cleanup test.
Technical artifact
Orphan triage sequence
principal P has active role R registered owner departed at t1 agent deployment removed at t2 API last use at t3 > t2 state: orphan candidate → suspend → inspect child grants
Run the denial test
Delete the owner record but leave child grants and a cached ALLOW. Suspend the principal and revoke dependent grants, then verify denied follow-up calls.
Primary references