When integrating Azure Active Directory (AD) with HashiCorp Vault, a common issue that administrators may face is missing AD group members—even after successful authentication configuration. This article outlines a real-world troubleshooting scenario and how the root cause was identified and resolved.
Issue Summary
After configuring Azure AD integration with HashiCorp Vault, it was observed that:
- The expected Azure AD group was not appearing under Vault's mapped entities.
- Users who were confirmed members of the group were unable to access Vault with the permissions assigned to the group.
- Authentication using Azure AD appeared successful, but group membership was not reflected in Vault.
Solution
To resolve the issue:
- Navigate to the Azure Portal.
- Open the App Registration that corresponds to the Vault production environment.
- Under Token Configuration, ensure that:
- A Group Claim is configured to include the necessary group information in the token.
- The specific Azure AD group is added to the allow list or the app is configured to return all groups the user is a member of.
- After making the changes, users were instructed to log into Vault again using their Azure AD credentials.
Best Practices
To prevent similar issues in the future:
- Always validate group claim settings in Azure App Registrations when configuring Azure AD auth in Vault.
- Ensure that your app registration allows required groups, especially in production environments.
- Encourage users to perform a fresh login after changes to AD groups or app registrations.
- Use Vault's
vault read identity/group/name/<group-name>command to verify if group members are properly synced.