RE: Spying in a corporate environment

["Craig Wright" <Craig.Wright () bdo com au>]

There are a couple ways to look at this issue. It is possible to restrict the "local admin user". However, local admin 
rights enable you to setup a service or process that runs as system.

System rights can override any and all GPO imposed restrictions and allow direct memory rewriting and the injection of 
dll's (as per debug privilege - even if this is removed from the local admin).

Setting restrictions on local admin makes life a little more difficult for the user/attacker, but it by no means stops 
them all together.

Regards,

Craig S Wright (GSE-Compliance)




Craig Wright
Manager of Information Systems

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Craig.Wright () bdo com au
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________________________________


From: listbounce () securityfocus com on behalf of Col
Sent: Sat 24/11/2007 3:19 AM
To: Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers
Cc: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Spying in a corporate environment



On Nov 23, 2007 3:08 PM, Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers
<bugtraq () planetcobalt net> wrote:
<snip>
> However, while being logged into the local machine instead of the domain
> domain policies are not re-applied. An administrator can now manually
> change/remove those policies. At least AFAICS. Someone correct me if I'm
> wrong.
>
> Regards
> Ansgar Wiechers

Administrators can always access the registry and update whatever they
like, getting the settings re-applied by GPO the next time it runs
(every 90 mins or so). I'm pretty sure the GUI doesn't let you do what
you describe, in fact I just logged into my desktop as local admin and
I cannot edit the WSUS or Firewall rules as they are controlled by
GPO.

Of course there is a registry key to stop all GPO processing on a
client - this includes password policy, complex passwords the lot...

None of this is a big problem, as long as our users are not technical! :)

I have enough information to go looking for a tool, in fact I have
someone writing something for me that will address the USB memory
stick question, the others are covered by the 5 different tools I've
had recommended on this list.

Thanks for all the replies, I'm well aware of the issues we face
because the CIO wants everyone to have admin rights its a daily
discussion in our office :)

Cheers.
Colin.