Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Last updated
Last updated
There are many other attacks and interesting misconfigurations that we may come across during an assessment. A broad understanding of the ins and outs of AD will help us think outside the box and discover issues that others are likely to miss.
In this section, we will move back and forth between a Windows and Linux attack host as we work through the various examples. You can spawn the hosts for this section at the end of this section and RDP into the MS01 Windows attack host. For the portions of this section that require interaction from a Linux host, you can open a PowerShell console on MS01 and SSH to 172.16.5.225 with the credentials htb-student:HTB_@cademy_stdnt!.
A default installation of Microsoft Exchange within an AD environment (with no split-administration model) opens up many attack vectors, as Exchange is often granted considerable privileges within the domain (via users, groups, and ACLs). The group Exchange Windows Permissions is not listed as a protected group, but members are granted the ability to write a DACL to the domain object. This can be leveraged to give a user DCSync privileges. An attacker can add accounts to this group by leveraging a DACL misconfiguration (possible) or by leveraging a compromised account that is a member of the Account Operators group. It is common to find user accounts and even computers as members of this group. Power users and support staff in remote offices are often added to this group, allowing them to reset passwords. This details a few techniques for leveraging Exchange for escalating privileges in an AD environment.
The Exchange group Organization Management is another extremely powerful group (effectively the "Domain Admins" of Exchange) and can access the mailboxes of all domain users. It is not uncommon for sysadmins to be members of this group. This group also has full control of the OU called Microsoft Exchange Security Groups, which contains the group Exchange Windows Permissions.
Viewing Organization Management's Permissions
If we can compromise an Exchange server, this will often lead to Domain Admin privileges. Additionally, dumping credentials in memory from an Exchange server will produce 10s if not 100s of cleartext credentials or NTLM hashes. This is often due to users logging in to Outlook Web Access (OWA) and Exchange caching their credentials in memory after a successful login.
The PrivExchange attack results from a flaw in the Exchange Server PushSubscription feature, which allows any domain user with a mailbox to force the Exchange server to authenticate to any host provided by the client over HTTP.
The Exchange service runs as SYSTEM and is over-privileged by default (i.e., has WriteDacl privileges on the domain pre-2019 Cumulative Update). This flaw can be leveraged to relay to LDAP and dump the domain NTDS database. If we cannot relay to LDAP, this can be leveraged to relay and authenticate to other hosts within the domain. This attack will take you directly to Domain Admin with any authenticated domain user account.
The Printer Bug is a flaw in the MS-RPRN protocol (Print System Remote Protocol). This protocol defines the communication of print job processing and print system management between a client and a print server. To leverage this flaw, any domain user can connect to the spool's named pipe with the RpcOpenPrinter method and use the RpcRemoteFindFirstPrinterChangeNotificationEx method, and force the server to authenticate to any host provided by the client over SMB.
The spooler service runs as SYSTEM and is installed by default in Windows servers running Desktop Experience. This attack can be leveraged to relay to LDAP and grant your attacker account DCSync privileges to retrieve all password hashes from AD.
The attack can also be used to relay LDAP authentication and grant Resource-Based Constrained Delegation (RBCD) privileges for the victim to a computer account under our control, thus giving the attacker privileges to authenticate as any user on the victim's computer. This attack can be leveraged to compromise a Domain Controller in a partner domain/forest, provided you have administrative access to a Domain Controller in the first forest/domain already, and the trust allows TGT delegation, which is not by default anymore.
Enumerating for MS-PRN Printer Bug
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
This was a flaw in the Kerberos protocol, which could be leveraged along with standard domain user credentials to elevate privileges to Domain Admin. A Kerberos ticket contains information about a user, including the account name, ID, and group membership in the Privilege Attribute Certificate (PAC). The PAC is signed by the KDC using secret keys to validate that the PAC has not been tampered with after creation.
On the first run of the tool, we can see that some records are blank, namely ?,LOGISTICS,?.
Using adidnsdump
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Viewing the Contents of the records.csv File
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
If we run again with the -r flag the tool will attempt to resolve unknown records by performing an A query. Now we can see that an IP address of 172.16.5.240 showed up for LOGISTICS. While this is a small example, it is worth running this tool in larger environments. We may uncover "hidden" records that can lead to discovering interesting hosts.
Using the -r Option to Resolve Unknown Records
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Finding Hidden Records in the records.csv File
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
There are many other misconfigurations that can be used to further your access within a domain.
Sensitive information such as account passwords are sometimes found in the user account Description or Notes fields and can be quickly enumerated using PowerView. For large domains, it is helpful to export this data to a CSV file to review offline.
Finding Passwords in the Description Field using Get-Domain User
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Checking for PASSWD_NOTREQD Setting using Get-DomainUser
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
The SYSVOL share can be a treasure trove of data, especially in large organizations. We may find many different batch, VBScript, and PowerShell scripts within the scripts directory, which is readable by all authenticated users in the domain. It is worth digging around this directory to hunt for passwords stored in scripts. Sometimes we will find very old scripts containing since disabled accounts or old passwords, but from time to time, we will strike gold, so we should always dig through this directory. Here, we can see an interesting script named reset_local_admin_pass.vbs.
Discovering an Interesting Script
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Taking a closer look at the script, we see that it contains a password for the built-in local administrator on Windows hosts. In this case, it would be worth checking to see if this password is still set on any hosts in the domain. We could do this using CrackMapExec and the --local-auth flag as shown in this module's Internal Password Spraying - from Linux section.
Finding a Password in the Script
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
When a new GPP is created, an .xml file is created in the SYSVOL share, which is also cached locally on endpoints that the Group Policy applies to. These files can include those used to:
Map drives (drives.xml)
Create local users
Create printer config files (printers.xml)
Creating and updating services (services.xml)
Creating scheduled tasks (scheduledtasks.xml)
Changing local admin passwords.
The XML looks like the following:
Viewing Groups.xml
If you retrieve the cpassword value more manually, the gpp-decrypt utility can be used to decrypt the password as follows:
Decrypting the Password with gpp-decrypt
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Locating & Retrieving GPP Passwords with CrackMapExec
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Using CrackMapExec's gpp_autologin Module
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
In the output above, we can see that we have retrieved the credentials for an account called guarddesk. This may have been set up so that shared workstations used by guards automatically log in at boot to accommodate multiple users throughout the day and night working different shifts. In this case, the credentials are likely a local admin, so it would be worth finding hosts where we can log in as an admin and hunt for additional data. Sometimes we may discover credentials for a highly privileged user or credentials for a disabled account/an expired password that is no use to us.
A theme that we touch on throughout this module is password re-use. Poor password hygiene is common in many organizations, so whenever we obtain credentials, we should check to see if we can use them to access other hosts (as a domain or local user), leverage any rights such as interesting ACLs, access shares, or use the password in a password spraying attack to uncover password re-use and maybe an account that grants us further access towards our goal.
There is also a metasploit module for exploiting it
With pre-authentication, a user enters their password, which encrypts a time stamp. The Domain Controller will decrypt this to validate that the correct password was used. If successful, a TGT will be issued to the user for further authentication requests in the domain. If an account has pre-authentication disabled, an attacker can request authentication data for the affected account and retrieve an encrypted TGT from the Domain Controller. This can be subjected to an offline password attack using a tool such as Hashcat or John the Ripper.
Viewing an Account with the Do not Require Kerberos Preauthentication Option
ASREPRoasting is similar to Kerberoasting, but it involves attacking the AS-REP instead of the TGS-REP. An SPN is not required. This setting can be enumerated with PowerView or built-in tools such as the PowerShell AD module.
Below is an example of the attack. PowerView can be used to enumerate users with their UAC value set to DONT_REQ_PREAUTH.
Enumerating for DONT_REQ_PREAUTH Value using Get-DomainUser
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
With this information in hand, the Rubeus tool can be leveraged to retrieve the AS-REP in the proper format for offline hash cracking. This attack does not require any domain user context and can be done by just knowing the SAM name for the user without Kerberos pre-auth. We will see an example of this using Kerbrute later in this section. Remember, add the /nowrap flag so the ticket is not column wrapped and is retrieved in a format that we can readily feed into Hashcat.
Retrieving AS-REP in Proper Format using Rubeus
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
We can then crack the hash offline using Hashcat with mode 18200.
Cracking the Hash Offline with Hashcat
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
When performing user enumeration with Kerbrute, the tool will automatically retrieve the AS-REP for any users found that do not require Kerberos pre-authentication.
Retrieving the AS-REP Using Kerbrute
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Hunting for Users with Kerberoast Pre-auth Not Required
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
We have now covered a few ways that we can perform an ASREPRoasting attack from both Windows and Linux hosts and witnessed how we do not need to be on a domain-joined host to a) enumerate accounts that do not require Kerberos pre-authentication and b) perform this attack and obtain an AS-REP to crack offline to either gain a foothold in the domain or further our access.
Group Policy provides administrators with many advanced settings that can be applied to both user and computer objects in an AD environment. Group Policy, when used right, is an excellent tool for hardening an AD environment by configuring user settings, operating systems, and applications. That being said, Group Policy can also be abused by attackers. If we can gain rights over a Group Policy Object via an ACL misconfiguration, we could leverage this for lateral movement, privilege escalation, and even domain compromise and as a persistence mechanism within the domain. Understanding how to enumerate and attack GPOs can give us a leg up and can sometimes be the ticket to achieving our goal in a rather locked-down environment.
GPO misconfigurations can be abused to perform the following attacks:
Adding additional rights to a user (such as SeDebugPrivilege, SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege, or SeImpersonatePrivilege)
Adding a local admin user to one or more hosts
Creating an immediate scheduled task to perform any number of actions
Enumerating GPO Names with PowerView
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Enumerating GPO Names with a Built-In Cmdlet
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Next, we can check if a user we can control has any rights over a GPO. Specific users or groups may be granted rights to administer one or more GPOs. A good first check is to see if the entire Domain Users group has any rights over one or more GPOs.
Enumerating Domain User GPO Rights
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Here we can see that the Domain Users group has various permissions over a GPO, such as WriteProperty and WriteDacl, which we could leverage to give ourselves full control over the GPO and pull off any number of attacks that would be pushed down to any users and computers in OUs that the GPO is applied to. We can use the GPO GUID combined with Get-GPO to see the display name of the GPO.
Converting GPO GUID to Name
Miscellaneous Misconfigurations
Checking in BloodHound, we can see that the Domain Users group has several rights over the Disconnect Idle RDP GPO, which could be leveraged for full control of the object.
If we select the GPO in BloodHound and scroll down to Affected Objects on the Node Info tab, we can see that this GPO is applied to one OU, which contains four computer objects.
We have seen various misconfigurations that we may run into during an assessment, and there are many more that will be covered in more advanced Active Directory modules. It is worth familiarizing ourselves with as many attacks as possible, so we recommend doing some research on topics such as:
Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) attacks
Kerberos Constrained Delegation
Kerberos Unconstrained Delegation
Kerberos Resource-Based Constrained Delegation (RBCD)
We can use tools such as the Get-SpoolStatus module from tool (that can be found on the spawned target) or tool to check for machines vulnerable to the . This flaw can be used to compromise a host in another forest that has Unconstrained Delegation enabled, such as a domain controller. It can help us to attack across forest trusts once we have compromised one forest.
The vulnerability allowed a forged PAC to be accepted by the KDC as legitimate. This can be leveraged to create a fake PAC, presenting a user as a member of the Domain Administrators or other privileged group. It can be exploited with tools such as the or the Impacket toolkit. The only defense against this attack is patching. The machine on the Hack The Box platform showcases this vulnerability.
Many applications and printers store LDAP credentials in their web admin console to connect to the domain. These consoles are often left with weak or default passwords. Sometimes, these credentials can be viewed in cleartext. Other times, the application has a test connection function that we can use to gather credentials by changing the LDAP IP address to that of our attack host and setting up a netcat listener on LDAP port 389. When the device attempts to test the LDAP connection, it will send the credentials to our machine, often in cleartext. Accounts used for LDAP connections are often privileged, but if not, this could serve as an initial foothold in the domain. Other times, a full LDAP server is required to pull off this attack, as detailed in this .
We can use a tool such as to enumerate all DNS records in a domain using a valid domain user account. This is especially helpful if the naming convention for hosts returned to us in our enumeration using tools such as BloodHound is similar to SRV01934.INLANEFREIGHT.LOCAL. If all servers and workstations have a non-descriptive name, it makes it difficult for us to know what exactly to attack. If we can access DNS entries in AD, we can potentially discover interesting DNS records that point to this same server, such as JENKINS.INLANEFREIGHT.LOCAL, which we can use to better plan out our attacks.
The tool works because, by default, all users can list the child objects of a DNS zone in an AD environment. By default, querying DNS records using LDAP does not return all results. So by using the adidnsdump tool, we can resolve all records in the zone and potentially find something useful for our engagement. The background and more in-depth explanation of this tool and technique can be found in this .
It is possible to come across domain accounts with the field set in the userAccountControl attribute. If this is set, the user is not subject to the current password policy length, meaning they could have a shorter password or no password at all (if empty passwords are allowed in the domain). A password may be set as blank intentionally (sometimes admins don’t want to be called out of hours to reset user passwords) or accidentally hitting enter before entering a password when changing it via the command line. Just because this flag is set on an account, it doesn't mean that no password is set, just that one may not be required. There are many reasons why this flag may be set on a user account, one being that a vendor product set this flag on certain accounts at the time of installation and never removed the flag post-install. It is worth enumerating accounts with this flag set and testing each to see if no password is required (I have seen this a couple of times on assessments). Also, include it in the client report if the goal of the assessment is to be as comprehensive as possible.
These files can contain an array of configuration data and defined passwords. The cpassword attribute value is AES-256 bit encrypted, but Microsoft , which can be used to decrypt the password. Any domain user can read these files as they are stored on the SYSVOL share, and all authenticated users in a domain, by default, have read access to this domain controller share.
This was patched in 2014 , to prevent administrators from setting passwords using GPP. The patch does not remove existing Groups.xml files with passwords from SYSVOL. If you delete the GPP policy instead of unlinking it from the OU, the cached copy on the local computer remains.
GPP passwords can be located by searching or manually browsing the SYSVOL share or using tools such as , the GPP Metasploit Post Module, and other Python/Ruby scripts which will locate the GPP and return the decrypted cpassword value. CrackMapExec also has two modules for locating and retrieving GPP passwords. One quick tip to consider during engagements: Often, GPP passwords are defined for legacy accounts, and you may therefore retrieve and decrypt the password for a locked or deleted account. However, it is worth attempting to password spray internally with this password (especially if it is unique). Password re-use is widespread, and the GPP password combined with password spraying could result in further access.
It is also possible to find passwords in files such as Registry.xml when autologon is configured via Group Policy. This may be set up for any number of reasons for a machine to automatically log in at boot. If this is set via Group Policy and not locally on the host, then anyone on the domain can retrieve credentials stored in the Registry.xml file created for this purpose. This is a separate issue from GPP passwords as Microsoft has not taken any action to block storing these credentials on the SYSVOL in cleartext and, hence, are readable by any authenticated user in the domain. We can hunt for this using CrackMapExec with the module, or using the script included in PowerSploit.
It's possible to obtain the Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT) for any account that has the setting enabled. Many vendor installation guides specify that their service account be configured in this way. The authentication service reply (AS_REP) is encrypted with the account’s password, and any domain user can request it.
The attack itself can be performed with the toolkit and other tools to obtain the ticket for the target account. If an attacker has GenericWrite or GenericAll permissions over an account, they can enable this attribute and obtain the AS-REP ticket for offline cracking to recover the account's password before disabling the attribute again. Like Kerberoasting, the success of this attack depends on the account having a relatively weak password.
With a list of valid users, we can use from the Impacket toolkit to hunt for all users with Kerberos pre-authentication not required. The tool will retrieve the AS-REP in Hashcat format for offline cracking for any found. We can also feed a wordlist such as jsmith.txt into the tool, it will throw errors for users that do not exist, but if it finds any valid ones without Kerberos pre-authentication, then it can be a nice way to obtain a foothold or further our access, depending on where we are in the course of our assessment. Even if we are unable to crack the AS-REP using Hashcat it is still good to report this as a finding to clients (just lower risk if we cannot crack the password) so they can assess whether or not the account requires this setting.
We can enumerate GPO information using many of the tools we've been using throughout this module such as PowerView and BloodHound. We can also use , , , among others, to audit the security of GPOs in a domain.
Using the function from PowerView, we can get a listing of GPOs by name.
This can be helpful for us to begin to see what types of security measures are in place (such as denying cmd.exe access and a separate password policy for service accounts). We can see that autologon is in use which may mean there is a readable password in a GPO, and see that Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) is present in the domain. If Group Policy Management Tools are installed on the host we are working from, we can use various built-in such as Get-GPO to perform the same enumeration.
We could use a tool such as to take advantage of this GPO misconfiguration by performing actions such as adding a user that we control to the local admins group on one of the affected hosts, creating an immediate scheduled task on one of the hosts to give us a reverse shell, or configure a malicious computer startup script to provide us with a reverse shell or similar. When using a tool like this, we need to be careful because commands can be run that affect every computer within the OU that the GPO is linked to. If we found an editable GPO that applies to an OU with 1,000 computers, we would not want to make the mistake of adding ourselves as a local admin to that many hosts. Some of the attack options available with this tool allow us to specify a target user or host. The hosts shown in the above image are not exploitable, and GPO attacks will be covered in-depth in a later module.
