7MS #731: CARTP – Cloud Red Team Tactics for Attacking and Defending Azure – THE FINAL CHAPTER!

Hey friends! Fair warning: today's episode is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster — we've got a big security win, some honest lab feedback, and a very personal share about my dad's funeral. Buckle up.

CARTP certified, baby! — I'm officially a Certified Azure Red Team Professional (CARTP), courtesy of the folks at Altered Security. It's been a long time coming (I originally signed up for the live version and fell off after missing a couple Saturdays), but I came back for the self-paced 30-day version and finally finished the job. The lab experience — the good: — ~25 objectives, a solid lab guide, and a really fun variety of attack paths. Highlights include stealing tokens, enumerating Azure tenants, attacking apps and VMs and key vaults, simulated phishing against real tenant email addresses, popping reverse shells, and some clever OneDrive-based follow-on attacks via session hijacking. There's even some web app pen testing (hello, server-side template injection!) sprinkled in. The lab experience — the not-so-good: — The included videos are… not my favorite format. Think notepad-on-screen copy-paste tutorials with zero context. To fill in the gaps, I leaned heavily on Claude — pasting blobs of the lab guide and asking things like "why did stealing this token give me X but not Y?" — and it did a great job standing in where a live instructor would normally add color and context. Exam tips (spoiler-free, I promise): — A few things that helped me:
I had Claude build me a CliffsNotes study guide from all our study-session chats — token context, command flags, the works. Before hitting start on the 24-hour clock, I fed Claude a list of all the tools I'd been using in the lab and had it build a one-shot PowerShell script to pull them all down from GitHub onto a fresh Windows VM. If your exam lab environment fails to spin up (as mine did in the US region), just try a different region — UK worked great for me. Enumerate. Enumerate. Enumerate. Know your tools, know which ones cover which areas of an Azure tenancy, and know how to get more verbose/tabular output when you need it. Take screenshots and notes as you go — the lab closes after 24 hours and you've got 48 hours to submit your report, so if you forgot to grab a screenshot of a flag… you are SOL, my friend.
The exam itself: — I started around 5:30 p.m., wrapped up around 11 p.m., and had the final flag captured, a full Word report drafted, and was in bed at a reasonable hour. Submitted the report the next morning after the gym and a mint hot cocoa, and had my pass confirmation back well within their 7-business-day window. Private pen test training is happening: — I'm currently running a private 3-day session of our Active Directory pen testing class (version 2.0 — it got a big facelift!). It's built on the Game of Active Directory platform and we fully pwn three separate domains over the course of three days. If you can send 3–7 people, reach out at 7MinSec.com/training to line up a private session. I'm also building an interest list for a public version later this fall (reach out if interested)! Also: check out 7MinSec.club — I dropped a little show-and-tell video over on 7MinSec.club this week giving you a peek at what the training looks like in action. Dad's funeral: — I shared some words at my dad's service this past Saturday and wanted to capture them here while they're fresh, since this podcast is basically my journal at this point. The service was perfect — very "him." He'd actually written funeral instructions (yes, they literally sat in a safety deposit box for years) specifying things like: max 10-minute message from the pastor, specific Bible verses, specific songs, and — my favorite — if the service runs over 45 minutes, someone needs to pull the fire alarm. He came up with that final instruction at his brother's funeral, which ran nearly two hours. He leaned over, squeezed my knee and said, "If my service goes over 45 minutes, pull the fire alarm." The song: — I played and sang at the service. The song was "Jesus Savior Pilot Me" — not a personal favorite of my dad's exactly, but he called it "the one about Jesus flying airplanes" after seeing me perform it years ago at the Minnesota State Fair chapel. I practiced it in the car on the way to Caribou every morning until I could get through it without crying. My guitar teacher's advice: close your eyes, focus on your fingers, and pretend you're just playing a tune in a room. It worked. Mostly. Thank you: — Seriously, so many of you have sent kind messages and I just want you to know it means the world. He taught me a lot about being a good dad, a good husband, and how to live with passion, a good attitude about your work, and a heart for serving others.