Azure App Service Deployment Password

Detects Azure App Service deployment passwords in configuration files and publish profiles. This pattern is based on a Microsoft Purview built-in sensitive information type. Users already running Purview may prefer to enable the built-in SIT directly, or use this version as a starting point for customisation.

Type

regex

Engine

universal

Confidence

high

Confidence justification

High confidence: structurally constrained pattern matching deployment credential assignments with corroborative keyword support reduces false positive rates significantly. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.

Detection quality

Partial

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth)

Frameworks

CIS Controls, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, PCI-DSS, SOC 2

Data categories

credentials, security

Scope

specific

Risk rating

10

Platform compatibility

Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)(?:userPWD|publishPassword|password)\s*=\s*"?[A-Za-z0-9+/=]{20,}"?

Corroborative evidence keywords

publishsettings, deployment, App Service, Azure, userPWD, publishPassword, deploy, publish profile, api key, api_key, apikey, access key, access token, auth token, authorization, bearer, conn str, connection string, connectionstring, cookie (+45 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• userPWD="AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" — Azure deployment password in publish profile
• publishPassword="ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnop" — Publish password with mixed case
• password="0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcd" — Generic password attribute with long value

Should not match

• userPWD="" — Empty password value
• password="short" — Too short to be a deployment password
• template example placeholder record identifier — Template/sample context should be excluded even when anchor words are present

Known false positives

• XML configuration templates and documentation containing placeholder deployment credentials. Mitigation: Check for common placeholder patterns and combine with Azure-specific context keywords.
• Non-Azure password attributes in configuration files that happen to match the pattern. Mitigation: Require proximity to Azure App Service specific keywords to reduce cross-platform false positives.

References

• Azure App Service deployment password entity definition - Microsoft Learn