Camp 1

Identity & Access Management

Establish production-grade identity controls with Managed Identity, Key Vault, and OAuth 2.1 — passwordless, enterprise-ready security for your MCP server.

Welcome to Camp 1, where you'll establish production-grade identity controls for your MCP server. In Base Camp, you learned that unauthenticated servers are dangerous. Now we'll deploy to Azure and implement enterprise security using Managed Identity, Key Vault, and OAuth 2.1 with JWT validation.

This camp demonstrates why the same vulnerabilities from Base Camp are even more dangerous in the cloud, and how Azure's identity services provide passwordless, production-grade solutions. You'll follow the same "vulnerable → exploit → fix → validate" methodology, but this time in a real cloud environment with real-world security controls.

What You'll Learn¶

Building on Base Camp's foundation, you'll master enterprise-grade identity and access management in Azure:

Prerequisites¶

Before starting Camp 1, ensure you have the required tools installed.

Quick checklist for Camp 1:

• Azure subscription with Contributor access
• Azure CLI (authenticated)
• Azure Developer CLI - azd (authenticated)
• Python 3.10+
• uv (Python package installer)
• Docker (installed and running)
• Completed Base Camp (recommended)

If you haven't installed these tools yet, visit the Prerequisites page for detailed installation instructions and verification steps.

Getting Started¶

Clone the Workshop Repository¶

If you haven't already cloned the repository (from Base Camp), do so now:

git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/sherpa.git
cd sherpa

Navigate to the Camp 1 directory:

cd camps/camp1-identity

The Ascent¶

Camp 1 follows six waypoints, each building on the previous one. This page covers Waypoint 1; the remaining waypoints live on their own pages, linked at the bottom.

Waypoint 1: Deploy Vulnerable Server to Azure¶

In this waypoint, you'll deploy two MCP servers to Azure Container Apps—a fully managed serverless container platform that handles scaling, networking, and TLS certificates automatically.

Why start with a vulnerable server? Following the "exploit → fix → validate" methodology, you'll first deploy an intentionally insecure server to see how cloud deployment amplifies security risks. Then, in later waypoints, you'll progressively harden it with Managed Identity, Key Vault, and OAuth 2.1.

What gets deployed:

• Vulnerable server — Uses static tokens (same pattern as Base Camp, but now the risks are worse because tokens are visible in the Azure Portal)
• Secure server — Pre-configured for OAuth 2.1 with JWT validation (you'll enable this in Waypoint 5)

The vulnerable server uses the same StaticTokenVerifier pattern from Base Camp, but now deployed to Azure where the vulnerabilities become even more dangerous.

# Example: How the vulnerable server "authenticates"
auth = StaticTokenVerifier(
    tokens={
        "camp1_demo_token_INSECURE": {"client_id": "user_001"}
    }
)

Let's provision the Azure infrastructure and deploy both servers:

cd camps/camp1-identity
azd up

When prompted:

• Environment name: Choose a name (e.g., camp1-dev)
• Subscription: Select your Azure subscription
• Location: Select your Azure region (e.g., eastus or westus2)

This single command provisions all Azure resources and deploys your code:

Infrastructure provisioned:

• Resource group
• Container Registry with Managed Identity access
• Log Analytics workspace
• Container Apps Environment
• Key Vault with RBAC for Managed Identity
• Managed Identity with proper role assignments
• Both Container Apps (vulnerable-server and secure-server)

Code deployed:

• Builds Docker images for both servers
• Pushes images to Azure Container Registry
• Updates Container Apps with the new images

What Just Deployed?¶

The vulnerable server is now running in Azure with:

• Token stored in plain-text environment variables
• Token never expires
• No audience validation
• Secrets visible in Azure Portal

This demonstrates OWASP MCP01 (Token Mismanagement & Secret Exposure) and MCP07 (Insufficient Authentication & Authorization) in a cloud environment!

Save Your Deployment Information¶

# Get your deployment info
azd env get-values | grep -E "VULNERABLE_SERVER_URL|SECURE_SERVER_URL|AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP|AZURE_KEY_VAULT"

# Get your deployment info
azd env get-values | Select-String "VULNERABLE_SERVER_URL|SECURE_SERVER_URL|AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP|AZURE_KEY_VAULT"

Keep these values handy - you'll need them for the exploits!