Cybersecurity
JADEPUFFER-linked attackers delete Azure resources
Microsoft said a group it tracks as Storm-3168 used compromised service principals in early June 2026 to delete Azure resources, while earlier Sysdig reporting placed JADEPUFFER in an AI-assisted ransomware case.
- Microsoft said it tracked the activity as Storm-3168 and linked it to the threat actor known as JADEPUFFER.
- The intrusion took place in early June 2026 and used two compromised service principals in the same tenant.
- Microsoft said the second service principal carried out more than 100 storage account deletion attempts in about seven minutes.
- The company said some deletions were blocked by resource locks and storage account deletion protection, and Azure SQL database deletions failed because of an unsupported API version.
- Microsoft said the service principal credentials had previously appeared in plaintext in a public GitHub issue, but it did not see a ransom note or data exfiltration.
Microsoft said it observed JADEPUFFER, which it tracks as Storm-3168, in an early June 2026 intrusion into Microsoft Azure that used compromised service principals. The company said one principal was used for discovery and the other for destructive actions and credential collection.
Sysdig had earlier described JADEPUFFER as an ransomware case run with help from a large language model, and said it had used a flaw in Langflow identified as CVE-2025-3248. Sysdig also said the same Langflow instance was later hit again with ENCFORGE, a Go-based ransomware strain.
Microsoft said one compromised service principal spent about 16 hours on reconnaissance and made more than 300 read operations, while the second later enumerated resources and then performed more than 150 destructive or credential-related actions in 35 minutes. It said the two principals appeared to divide the work and the timing suggested scripted or automated behaviour.
The destructive phase lasted about seven minutes and included more than 100 attempts to delete storage accounts. Microsoft said other targets included an Azure Key Vault, Function App, App Service plan and multiple Azure SQL databases, with some deletions blocked by locks and deletion protection and the database deletions failing because the API version used was not supported.
Microsoft said the service principal’s client ID, client secret and tenant ID had earlier been exposed in plaintext in a public GitHub issue by an employee of the affected organisation, and the secret remained reachable through edit history after removal. It said the pattern was ransomware-aligned, but it did not find a ransom note or evidence of successful data theft.
Named in this story
People
- Yossi Weizman
- co-authored Microsoft’s analysis
- Tushar Mudi
- co-authored Microsoft’s analysis
Companies
- Microsoft
- analysed the incident and tracked it as Storm-3168
- Sysdig
- first documented JADEPUFFER and the earlier ransomware case
Organisations
- JADEPUFFER
- the threat actor behind the Azure intrusion
- Storm-3168
- Microsoft’s name for the same activity cluster
- Microsoft Security Research team
- worked with the named researchers on the analysis
Products and systems
- Langflow
- its flaw was used in the earlier intrusion
- ENCFORGE
- the Go-based ransomware strain later used against the same Langflow instance
- Nacos
- had service configuration files encrypted in the earlier attack
- Microsoft Azure
- the cloud environment targeted in the June intrusion
How the source tells it
The piece read as a technical incident report, but it borrowed urgency from Microsoft’s AI-attack framing and novelty from Sysdig’s first-ever claim.
- novelty it leaned on a first-ever description of the earlier ransomware chain to make the case feel new
- urgency it paired a broad shift claim with advice that defenders should use AI as well