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Privileged Groups

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Well Known groups with administration privileges

  • Administrators

  • Domain Admins

  • Enterprise Admins

Account Operators

This group is empowered to create accounts and groups that are not administrators on the domain. Additionally, it enables local login to the Domain Controller (DC).

To identify the members of this group, the following command is executed:

Adding new users is permitted, as well as local login to DC01.

AdminSDHolder group

The AdminSDHolder group's Access Control List (ACL) is crucial as it sets permissions for all "protected groups" within Active Directory, including high-privilege groups. This mechanism ensures the security of these groups by preventing unauthorized modifications.

An attacker could exploit this by modifying the AdminSDHolder group's ACL, granting full permissions to a standard user. This would effectively give that user full control over all protected groups. If this user's permissions are altered or removed, they would be automatically reinstated within an hour due to the system's design.

Commands to review the members and modify permissions include:

A script is available to expedite the restoration process: Invoke-ADSDPropagation.ps1.

For more details, visit ired.team.

AD Recycle Bin

Membership in this group allows for the reading of deleted Active Directory objects, which can reveal sensitive information:

Domain Controller Access

Access to files on the DC is restricted unless the user is part of the Server Operators group, which changes the level of access.

Privilege Escalation

Using PsService or sc from Sysinternals, one can inspect and modify service permissions. The Server Operators group, for instance, has full control over certain services, allowing for the execution of arbitrary commands and privilege escalation:

This command reveals that Server Operators have full access, enabling the manipulation of services for elevated privileges.

Backup Operators

Membership in the Backup Operators group provides access to the DC01 file system due to the SeBackup and SeRestore privileges. These privileges enable folder traversal, listing, and file copying capabilities, even without explicit permissions, using the FILE_FLAG_BACKUP_SEMANTICS flag. Utilizing specific scripts is necessary for this process.

To list group members, execute:

Local Attack

To leverage these privileges locally, the following steps are employed:

  1. Import necessary libraries:

  1. Enable and verify SeBackupPrivilege:

  1. Access and copy files from restricted directories, for instance:

AD Attack

Direct access to the Domain Controller's file system allows for the theft of the NTDS.dit database, which contains all NTLM hashes for domain users and computers.

Using diskshadow.exe

  1. Create a shadow copy of the C drive:

  1. Copy NTDS.dit from the shadow copy:

Alternatively, use robocopy for file copying:

  1. Extract SYSTEM and SAM for hash retrieval:

  1. Retrieve all hashes from NTDS.dit:

Using wbadmin.exe

  1. Set up NTFS filesystem for SMB server on attacker machine and cache SMB credentials on the target machine.

  2. Use wbadmin.exe for system backup and NTDS.dit extraction:

For a practical demonstration, see DEMO VIDEO WITH IPPSEC.

DnsAdmins

Members of the DnsAdmins group can exploit their privileges to load an arbitrary DLL with SYSTEM privileges on a DNS server, often hosted on Domain Controllers. This capability allows for significant exploitation potential.

To list members of the DnsAdmins group, use:

Execute arbitrary DLL

Members can make the DNS server load an arbitrary DLL (either locally or from a remote share) using commands such as:

Restarting the DNS service (which may require additional permissions) is necessary for the DLL to be loaded:

For more details on this attack vector, refer to ired.team.

Mimilib.dll

It's also feasible to use mimilib.dll for command execution, modifying it to execute specific commands or reverse shells. Check this post for more information.

WPAD Record for MitM

DnsAdmins can manipulate DNS records to perform Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks by creating a WPAD record after disabling the global query block list. Tools like Responder or Inveigh can be used for spoofing and capturing network traffic.

### Event Log Readers Members can access event logs, potentially finding sensitive information such as plaintext passwords or command execution details:

Exchange Windows Permissions

This group can modify DACLs on the domain object, potentially granting DCSync privileges. Techniques for privilege escalation exploiting this group are detailed in Exchange-AD-Privesc GitHub repo.

Hyper-V Administrators

Hyper-V Administrators have full access to Hyper-V, which can be exploited to gain control over virtualized Domain Controllers. This includes cloning live DCs and extracting NTLM hashes from the NTDS.dit file.

Exploitation Example

Firefox's Mozilla Maintenance Service can be exploited by Hyper-V Administrators to execute commands as SYSTEM. This involves creating a hard link to a protected SYSTEM file and replacing it with a malicious executable:

Note: Hard link exploitation has been mitigated in recent Windows updates.

Organization Management

In environments where Microsoft Exchange is deployed, a special group known as Organization Management holds significant capabilities. This group is privileged to access the mailboxes of all domain users and maintains full control over the 'Microsoft Exchange Security Groups' Organizational Unit (OU). This control includes the Exchange Windows Permissions group, which can be exploited for privilege escalation.

Privilege Exploitation and Commands

Print Operators

Members of the Print Operators group are endowed with several privileges, including the SeLoadDriverPrivilege, which allows them to log on locally to a Domain Controller, shut it down, and manage printers. To exploit these privileges, especially if SeLoadDriverPrivilege is not visible under an unelevated context, bypassing User Account Control (UAC) is necessary.

To list the members of this group, the following PowerShell command is used:

For more detailed exploitation techniques related to SeLoadDriverPrivilege, one should consult specific security resources.

Remote Desktop Users

This group's members are granted access to PCs via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). To enumerate these members, PowerShell commands are available:

Further insights into exploiting RDP can be found in dedicated pentesting resources.

Remote Management Users

Members can access PCs over Windows Remote Management (WinRM). Enumeration of these members is achieved through:

For exploitation techniques related to WinRM, specific documentation should be consulted.

Server Operators

This group has permissions to perform various configurations on Domain Controllers, including backup and restore privileges, changing system time, and shutting down the system. To enumerate the members, the command provided is:

References

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