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Re: Flaw in Microsoft Domain Account Caching Allows Local Workstation Admins to Temporarily Escalate Privileges and Login as Cached Domain Admin Accounts (2010-M$-002)


From: "Thor (Hammer of God)" <thor () hammerofgod com>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:04:02 +0000

-----Original Message-----
From: kattrap () gmail com [mailto:kattrap () gmail com] On Behalf Of Andrea
Lee
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 9:12 AM
To: Thor (Hammer of God)
Cc: George Carlson; bugtraq () securityfocus com; full-
disclosure () lists grok org uk
Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] Flaw in Microsoft Domain Account Caching Allows
Local Workstation Admins to Temporarily Escalate Privileges and Login as
Cached Domain Admin Accounts (2010-M$-002)

I hope I'm not just feeding the troll...

No, you are perpetuating inaccurate vulnerability claims. 

A local admin is an admin on one system. The domain admin is an admin on all
systems in the domain, including mission critical Windows servers. With
temporary domain admin privs, the local admin could log into the AD and
change permissions / passwords for another user or another user, thus
getting full admin rights on all systems for a long period of time. Plus whatever
havoc might be caused by having the ability to change rights on fileshares to
allow the new domain admin to see confidential files..

People, PLEASE at least take the time to read the OP before just adding comments.  You don't get any "temporary domain 
admin privileges."  Period.   Authenticating against cached domain credentials on a local system cannot be used for 
ANYTHING other than logging on to the local system when a controller is not available.  Period.   Now, please read this 
part carefully:  *You must be a local administrator to use utilities to overwrite the cached verifier of cached 
credentials.*  The most you can do is to allow yourself to log on as an account that has local admin.  YOU ARE ALREADY 
A LOCAL ADMIN AT THIS POINT.

1) You MUST be local admin to access the cached domain credentials. 
2) You can't log on to any network resources as the cached user.
3) You can't long on to another workstation as the cached user.
4) You can't access any EFS or other user-based data as the cached user.
5) Bottom line, you can't do a single thing more than you could already do.  

If anyone still thinks you this has any escalation properties at all, then try it yourselves.

t

I would expect that the intent is to use another flaw for a normal user to
become a local admin, and then jump to domain admin via this.

So yes. In an enterprise environment, the "domain administrator" is "bigger".

Cheers,

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Thor (Hammer of God)
<thor () hammerofgod com> wrote:
Wow.  I guess you didn't read the post either.  I'm a bit surprised that a Sr.
Network Engineer thinks that Group Policies "differentiate between local and
Domain administrators."  You're making it sound like you think Group Policy
application has some "magic permissions" or something, or that a "domain
administrator" is a "bigger" administrator than the local administrator.

Group Policy loads from the client via the Group Policy Client service.   If I'm
a local admin, I can just set my local system to not process group policy via the
GPExtensions hive.  Done.  If I take the domain admin out of my local
administrators, they can't do anything.  Done.

How exactly do you think this is problematic for "shops that differentiate
between desktop support and AD support"?  (whatever that means).

t

-----Original Message-----
From: full-disclosure-bounces () lists grok org uk
[mailto:full-disclosure- bounces () lists grok org uk] On Behalf Of
George Carlson
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 10:12 AM
To: bugtraq () securityfocus com; full-disclosure () lists grok org uk
Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] Flaw in Microsoft Domain Account
Caching Allows Local Workstation Admins to Temporarily Escalate
Privileges and Login as Cached Domain Admin Accounts (2010-M$-002)

Your objections are mostly true in a normal sense.  However, it is not
true when Group Policy is taken into account.  Group Policies
differentiate between local and Domain administrators and so this
vulnerability is problematic for shops that differentiate between
desktop support and AD support.


George Carlson
Sr. Network Engineer
(804) 423-7430


-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan Kanthak [mailto:stefan.kanthak () nexgo de]
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 11:30 AM
To: bugtraq () securityfocus com; full-disclosure () lists grok org uk
Cc: stenoplasma () exploitdevelopment com
Subject: Re: Flaw in Microsoft Domain Account Caching Allows Local
Workstation Admins to Temporarily Escalate Privileges and Login as
Cached Domain Admin Accounts (2010-M$-002)

"StenoPlasma @ www.ExploitDevelopment.com" wrote:

Much ado about nothing!

TITLE:
Flaw in Microsoft Domain Account Caching Allows Local Workstation
Admins to Temporarily Escalate Privileges and Login as Cached Domain
Admin Accounts

There is NO privilege escalation. A local administrator is an
admistrator is an administrator...

SUMMARY AND IMPACT:
All versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems allow real-time
modifications to the Active Directory cached accounts listing stored
on all Active Directory domain workstations and servers. This allows
domain users that have local administrator privileges on domain
assets to modify their cached accounts to masquerade as other domain
users that have logged in to those domain assets. This will allow
local administrators to temporarily escalate their domain privileges
on domain workstations or servers.

Wrong. The local administrator is already local administrator. There's
nothing the elevate any more.

If the local administrator masquerades as an Active Directory Domain
Admin account, the modified cached account is now free to modify
system files and user account profiles using the identity of the
Domain Admin's account.

There is no need to masquerade: the local administrator can perform
all these modifications, and if s/he wishes, hide the tracks: turn off
auditing before, clear audit/event logs afterwards, change the SID in
the ACEs of all objects touched (SubInACL.Exe comes handy), ...

Or: just change the "NoDefaultAdminOwner" setting. After that, all
"Administrators" masquerade as "Administrators". uh-oh.

This includes
creating scripts to run as the Domain Admin account the next time
that they log in.

Ridiculous.
A local administrator can add any script/executable s/he wants to any
"autostart" (scheduled task, registry, logon script, userinit, shell, ...).
There's ABSOLUTELY no need to masquerade.

All files created will not be linked to your domain account in file
and folder access lists.

ACEs can always be edited by a local administrator, see SubInACL.Exe,
or TakeOwn.Exe.

All security access lists
will only show the Domain Admin's account once you log out of the
modified cached account. This leads to a number of security issues
that I will not attempt to identify in the article. One major issue
is the lack of non-repudiation. Editing files and other actions will
be completed as another user account. Event log entries for object
access will only be created if administrators are auditing
successful access to files (This will lead to enormous event log sizes).

A local administrator can turn audit/event logs off, clear or modify them.

Stefan

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_______________________________________________
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Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
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