Azure Red Team Expert (AZRTE) - HackTricks

Introduction

On March 27, 2026, I successfully achieved the Azure Red Team Expert (AZRTE) certification by HackTricks. Following my tradition with previous certifications,and due to the lack of reviews that exists out there, I want to share my experience.

This post aims to provide a cohesive and unified overview of the course structure, lab environment, and exam experience, along with practical tips for those looking to conquer this AZURE challenge.

What to expect from the AZRTE Certification

The ARTE certification is a comprehensive Azure-focused penetration testing course designed to take students from basic cloud concepts like Azure services and its components to teach the Pentesting & Red Team methodology. It covers the core Azure pentesting methodology, diving into over 20 common services and exploring techniques for enumeration, privilege escalation, and persistence.

The target audience, it is primarily aimed at Red Team professionals looking to audit Azure environments.

Before starting the course

When you purchase the course, you receive an activation voucher. It is crucial to plan your start date carefully.

• The 60-Day Timer: The moment you purchase the course, you will receive an email like the following with the link to activate your course. Once activated, a 60-day countdown for lab access begins. Which means that both the laboratory environments and the course materials are activated at the same time upon voucher redemption (You can not access the course materials before activating the labs), and because the labs are time-limited, those balancing the course with a full-time job will likely require the full 60 days to complete the curriculum.

• Sequential Activation: If you purchase multiple HackTricks courses, do not activate them simultaneously, as the timers for both will run concurrently. If you have already done that, reach training support ASAP to disactivate any of the courses.
• Course Materials: You do not need deep prior Azure knowledge, but reviewing the syllabus beforehand to understand services like Entra ID, Azure IAM and Azure resource will help you jump directly into the "hacking" portions. Current Azure Services explained in the course:
  • Azure IAM
  • Azure Applications
  • Azure Key Vault
  • Azure Virtual Machine & Networking
  • Azure File Share
  • Azure Table Storage
  • Azure SQL Database
  • Azure MySQL & PostgreSQL
  • Azure CosmosDB
  • Azure App Service
  • Azure Research Techniques
  • Azure Function Apps
  • Azure Container Registry
  • Azure Container Instances, Apps & Jobs
  • Azure Queue
  • Azure Service Bus
  • Azure Automation Account
  • Azure Logic Apps
  • Azure Cloud Shell
  • Azure Virtual Desktop

The labs

The heart of AZRTE lies in its almost 100 hand-on labs, where you can put in practice the knowledge stored at Cloud HackTricks Wiki, the labs range from simple 15-minute tasks to complex multi-hour challenges. Early labs focus on specific misconfigurations where you typically escalate privileges to retrieve a flag from Secrets Manager. The final labs focus on building the methodology that you will use during a real engagement.

To help students navigate these challenges, the course provides multiple support alternatives:

• Integrated AI Chatbot: B By far the best feature of the course. It’s perfect for answering quick questions, offering guidance, or debugging lab errors. However, a word of advice: don’t blindly trust it for PoC generation. For reliable, exploitation-ready PoCs, stick to the gold standard and source them directly from Cloud HackTricks.

  

  As an example you can use the following prompt:

• Lab Walkthroughs: While the official solutions show you how to beat the labs, they don't explain the underlying mechanics behind the commands, you'll have to reverse-engineer the "why" yourself. I wish they spent more time explaining the mechanics behind the commands rather than leaving students to research it themselves. Keep in mind that you are restricted to ten walkthrough downloads for the entire course. I highly recommend saving those credits for these specific labs: Whitebox 2-1, Active Directory Blackbox Lab (I & II), and Azure & Entra ID Logging & Monitoring.

• Discord: If despite all of that, your questions are not been solved, you can always ask in the Discord channel or open a ticket support.

To master the course methodologies and ensure exam readiness, I highly recommend prioritizing the White and Black Box labs. These scenarios provide the perfect environment to validate your toolset; identifying and troubleshooting any technical issues here will prevent unwelcome surprises or tool failures during the actual exam.

The Exam Experience

The exam begins with initial access as a compromised user with limited access to company resources. Your objective is to capture three flags within a 12-hour window, and notably, there is no technical report required to pass.

Unlike the HackTricks AWS exam, the AZRTE exam path is highly sequential: you must successfully obtain the privileges of the first flag before you can realistically progress toward the second. However, there is an alternative shortcut to passing, if you submit a valid Pull Request to the Hacktricks Cloud GitHub repository that introduces a new, unlisted Azure exploit or technique, you can successfully pass the exam with one fewer flag than normally required.

While this exam features fewer total resources to investigate compared to its AWS counterpart, meticulous note-taking remains absolutely vital. You will frequently need to piece scattered clues together to map out your attack path. Fortunately, the exam is incredibly fair, everything required to succeed is directly taught within the course labs.

My own exam experience was quite smooth. I always knew conceptually what needed to be done next, though the execution became tedious at times due to token management and multi-step exploitation chains. In total, the exam took me 6 hours, averaging roughly two hours per flag through steady, which required continuous enumeration.

The 12-hour time window is more than generous. The exam isn't designed to trap you in frustrating, unrealistic rabbit holes or force an arbitrary failure; it is a fair and rewarding challenge that simply requires a clear head and the methodical application of the techniques you practiced in the labs.

Success Strategy and Tips

Even though this Azure certification is noticeably more complex than its AWS counterpart (the AWS Red Team Expert), everything you need to succeed is fully documented in the Cloud HackTricks Wiki.

That said, you shouldn't rely on raw documentation alone. It is highly recommended to build your own personal cheat sheet as you work through the labs, documenting your most frequently used Azure CLI commands, specific filters, enumeration syntax, and key observations. If you need a solid starting point, feel free to reference my personal Azure Enumeration Cheat Sheet.

Also, I highly recommend against relying heavily on automated enumeration tools for this exam. Using the official Azure CLI combined with a solid, well-organized command cheat sheet is more than enough to successfully compromise the environment and clear the exam.

The Exploitation Loop

The exam follows a logical, cyclical methodology. When you feel stuck, refer back to this loop to refocus your efforts:

1. Map Your Scope: Review the roles and groups assigned to your current compromised principal to understand your exact baseline.
2. Enumerate Resources: Look for accessible Azure resources under your current permissions and explicitly check your privileges over them.
3. Identify Connections: Uncover other entities (users, groups, service principals) and determine their specific privileges over the tenant resources.
4. Escalate & Pivot: Leverage your current privileges to compromise or assume the identity of the target entity using techniques sourced from HackTricks.
5. Repeat: Return to Step 2 using your newly acquired principal.

Conclusion

Is the AZRTE certification worth it? If you are serious about cloud security and red teaming, the answer is a resounding yes. While the price point is over €1,000, you can always ask your company to purchase it for you, but students have a 20% discount to make the investment even more accessible.

Finally, if you find AZRTE too daunting or expensive, HackTricks offers the Azure Red Team Apprentice (AZRTA), created to build a strong foundation in cloud security concepts and attack fundamentals.

That being said, if you already have some offensive security experience under your belt, my honest advice? Skip the safety net, go full YOLO, and dive straight into the AZRTE.