'Confused Deputy' Flaws Persist in Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure

Confused Deputy vulnerabilities arise when a trusted service or component is manipulated into performing privileged actions on behalf of an attacker, bypassing intended access control boundaries. In cloud environments like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, these flaws are particularly dangerous because they can allow attackers to escalate to administrative privileges without directly compromising credentials. The persistence of these issues highlights a systemic challenge in cloud platform design, where implicit trust relationships between services create exploitable gaps. Organizations relying on cloud-native identity and access management (IAM) configurations may unknowingly expose themselves to lateral movement and full account takeover. This matters because even well-configured tenant environments can be compromised through platform-level architectural weaknesses outside the customer's direct control.