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Technique ID: T1136
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Name: Create Account
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Description: Adversaries may create an account to maintain access to victim systems. With a sufficient level of access, creating such accounts may be used to establish secondary credentialed access that do not require persistent remote access tools to be deployed on the system. Accounts may be created on the local system or within a domain or cloud tenant. In cloud environments, adversaries may create accounts that only have access to specific services, which can reduce the chance of detection.
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Tactics: Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Azure AD, Containers, Google Workspace, IaaS, Linux, Network, Office 365, SaaS, Windows, macOS
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Detection Strategies: Monitor for processes and command-line parameters associated with account creation, such as net user or useradd. Collect data on account creation within a network. Event ID 4720 is generated when a user account is created on a Windows system and domain controller. Perform regular audits of domain and local system accounts to detect suspicious accounts that may have been created by an adversary. Collect usage logs from cloud administrator accounts to identify unusual activity in the creation of new accounts and assignment of roles to those accounts. Monitor for accounts assigned to admin roles that go over a certain threshold of known admins.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1136
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Technique ID: T1136.003
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Name: Create Account: Cloud Account
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Description: Adversaries may create a cloud account to maintain access to victim systems. With a sufficient level of access, such accounts may be used to establish secondary credentialed access that does not require persistent remote access tools to be deployed on the system. Adversaries may create accounts that only have access to specific cloud services, which can reduce the chance of detection. Once an adversary has created a cloud account, they can then manipulate that account to ensure persistence and allow access to additional resources - for example, by adding Additional Cloud Credentials or assigning Additional Cloud Roles.
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Tactics: Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Azure AD, Google Workspace, IaaS, Office 365, SaaS
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Detection Strategies: Collect usage logs from cloud user and administrator accounts to identify unusual activity in the creation of new accounts and assignment of roles to those accounts. Monitor for accounts assigned to admin roles that go over a certain threshold of known admins.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1136/003
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Technique ID: T1546
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Name: Event Triggered Execution
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Description: Adversaries may establish persistence and/or elevate privileges using system mechanisms that trigger execution based on specific events. Various operating systems have means to monitor and subscribe to events such as logons or other user activity such as running specific applications/binaries. Cloud environments may also support various functions and services that monitor and can be invoked in response to specific cloud events. Adversaries may abuse these mechanisms as a means of maintaining persistent access to a victim via repeatedly executing malicious code. After gaining access to a victim system, adversaries may create/modify event triggers to point to malicious content that will be executed whenever the event trigger is invoked. Since the execution can be proxied by an account with higher permissions, such as SYSTEM or service accounts, an adversary may be able to abuse these triggered execution mechanisms to escalate their privileges.
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Tactics: Persistence, Privilege Escalation
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Platforms Affected: IaaS, Linux, Office 365, SaaS, Windows, macOS
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Detection Strategies: Monitoring for additions or modifications of mechanisms that could be used to trigger event-based execution, especially the addition of abnormal commands such as execution of unknown programs, opening network sockets, or reaching out across the network. Also look for changes that do not line up with updates, patches, or other planned administrative activity. These mechanisms may vary by OS, but are typically stored in central repositories that store configuration information such as the Windows Registry, Common Information Model (CIM), and/or specific named files, the last of which can be hashed and compared to known good values. Monitor for processes, API/System calls, and other common ways of manipulating these event repositories. Tools such as Sysinternals Autoruns can be used to detect changes to execution triggers that could be attempts at persistence. Also look for abnormal process call trees for execution of other commands that could relate to Discovery actions or other techniques. Monitor DLL loads by processes, specifically looking for DLLs that are not recognized or not normally loaded into a process. Look for abnormal process behavior that may be due to a process loading a malicious DLL. Data and events should not be viewed in isolation, but as part of a chain of behavior that could lead to other activities, such as making network connections for Command and Control, learning details about the environment through Discovery, and conducting Lateral Movement.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546
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Technique ID: T1525
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Name: Implant Internal Image
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Description: Adversaries may implant cloud or container images with malicious code to establish persistence after gaining access to an environment. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Images, and Azure Images as well as popular container runtimes such as Docker can be implanted or backdoored. Unlike Upload Malware, this technique focuses on adversaries implanting an image in a registry within a victim’s environment. Depending on how the infrastructure is provisioned, this could provide persistent access if the infrastructure provisioning tool is instructed to always use the latest image. A tool has been developed to facilitate planting backdoors in cloud container images. If an adversary has access to a compromised AWS instance, and permissions to list the available container images, they may implant a backdoor such as a Web Shell.
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Tactics: Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Containers, IaaS
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Detection Strategies: Monitor interactions with images and containers by users to identify ones that are added or modified anomalously. In containerized environments, changes may be detectable by monitoring the Docker daemon logs or setting up and monitoring Kubernetes audit logs depending on registry configuration.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1525
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Technique ID: T1556
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Name: Modify Authentication Process
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Description: Adversaries may modify authentication mechanisms and processes to access user credentials or enable otherwise unwarranted access to accounts. The authentication process is handled by mechanisms, such as the Local Security Authentication Server (LSASS) process and the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) on Windows, pluggable authentication modules (PAM) on Unix-based systems, and authorization plugins on MacOS systems, responsible for gathering, storing, and validating credentials. By modifying an authentication process, an adversary may be able to authenticate to a service or system without using Valid Accounts. Adversaries may maliciously modify a part of this process to either reveal credentials or bypass authentication mechanisms. Compromised credentials or access may be used to bypass access controls placed on various resources on systems within the network and may even be used for persistent access to remote systems and externally available services, such as VPNs, Outlook Web Access and remote desktop.
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Tactics: Credential Access, Defense Evasion, Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Azure AD, Google Workspace, IaaS, Linux, Network, Office 365, SaaS, Windows, macOS
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Detection Strategies: Monitor for new, unfamiliar DLL files written to a domain controller and/or local computer. Monitor for changes to Registry entries for password filters (ex: HKEYMACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Notification Packages) and correlate then investigate the DLL files these files reference. Password filters will also show up as an autorun and loaded DLL in lsass.exe. Monitor for calls to OpenProcess that can be used to manipulate lsass.exe running on a domain controller as well as for malicious modifications to functions exported from authentication-related system DLLs (such as cryptdll.dll and samsrv.dll). Monitor PAM configuration and module paths (ex: /etc/pam.d/) for changes. Use system-integrity tools such as AIDE and monitoring tools such as auditd to monitor PAM files. Monitor for suspicious additions to the /Library/Security/SecurityAgentPlugins directory. Configure robust, consistent account activity audit policies across the enterprise and with externally accessible services. Look for suspicious account behavior across systems that share accounts, either user, admin, or service accounts. Examples: one account logged into multiple systems simultaneously; multiple accounts logged into the same machine simultaneously; accounts logged in at odd times or outside of business hours. Activity may be from interactive login sessions or process ownership from accounts being used to execute binaries on a remote system as a particular account. Correlate other security systems with login information (e.g., a user has an active login session but has not entered the building or does not have VPN access). Monitor property changes in Group Policy that manage authentication mechanisms (i.e. Group Policy Modification). The Store passwords using reversible encryption configuration should be set to Disabled. Additionally, monitor and/or block suspicious command/script execution of -AllowReversiblePasswordEncryption $true, Set-ADUser and Set-ADAccountControl. Finally, monitor Fine-Grained Password Policies and regularly audit user accounts and group settings.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1556
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Technique ID: T1556.007
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Name: Modify Authentication Process: Hybrid Identity
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Description: Adversaries may patch, modify, or otherwise backdoor cloud authentication processes that are tied to on-premises user identities in order to bypass typical authentication mechanisms, access credentials, and enable persistent access to accounts. Many organizations maintain hybrid user and device identities that are shared between on-premises and cloud-based environments. These can be maintained in a number of ways. For example, Azure AD includes three options for synchronizing identities between Active Directory and Azure AD: Password Hash Synchronization (PHS), in which a privileged on-premises account synchronizes user password hashes between Active Directory and Azure AD, allowing authentication to Azure AD to take place entirely in the cloud Pass Through Authentication (PTA), in which Azure AD authentication attempts are forwarded to an on-premises PTA agent, which validates the credentials against Active Directory * Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS), in which a trust relationship is established between Active Directory and Azure AD AD FS can also be used with other SaaS and cloud platforms such as AWS and GCP, which will hand off the authentication process to AD FS and receive a token containing the hybrid users’ identity and privileges. By modifying authentication processes tied to hybrid identities, an adversary may be able to establish persistent privileged access to cloud resources. For example, adversaries who compromise an on-premises server running a PTA agent may inject a malicious DLL into the `AzureADConnectAuthenticationAgentService` process that authorizes all attempts to authenticate to Azure AD, as well as records user credentials. In environments using AD FS, an adversary may edit the `Microsoft.IdentityServer.Servicehost` configuration file to load a malicious DLL that generates authentication tokens for any user with any set of claims, thereby bypassing multi-factor authentication and defined AD FS policies. In some cases, adversaries may be able to modify the hybrid identity authentication process from the cloud. For example, adversaries who compromise a Global Administrator account in an Azure AD tenant may be able to register a new PTA agent via the web console, similarly allowing them to harvest credentials and log into the Azure AD environment as any user.
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Tactics: Credential Access, Defense Evasion, Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Azure AD, Google Workspace, IaaS, Office 365, SaaS, Windows
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Detection Strategies: No detection description provided.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1556/007
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Technique ID: T1556.006
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Name: Modify Authentication Process: Multi-Factor Authentication
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Description: Adversaries may disable or modify multi-factor authentication (MFA) mechanisms to enable persistent access to compromised accounts. Once adversaries have gained access to a network by either compromising an account lacking MFA or by employing an MFA bypass method such as Multi-Factor Authentication Request Generation, adversaries may leverage their access to modify or completely disable MFA defenses. This can be accomplished by abusing legitimate features, such as excluding users from Azure AD Conditional Access Policies, registering a new yet vulnerable/adversary-controlled MFA method, or by manually patching MFA programs and configuration files to bypass expected functionality. For example, modifying the Windows hosts file (`C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts`) to redirect MFA calls to localhost instead of an MFA server may cause the MFA process to fail. If a "fail open" policy is in place, any otherwise successful authentication attempt may be granted access without enforcing MFA. Depending on the scope, goals, and privileges of the adversary, MFA defenses may be disabled for individual accounts or for all accounts tied to a larger group, such as all domain accounts in a victim's network environment.
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Tactics: Credential Access, Defense Evasion, Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Azure AD, Google Workspace, IaaS, Linux, Office 365, SaaS, Windows, macOS
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Detection Strategies: No detection description provided.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1556/006
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Technique ID: T1137
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Name: Office Application Startup
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Description: Adversaries may leverage Microsoft Office-based applications for persistence between startups. Microsoft Office is a fairly common application suite on Windows-based operating systems within an enterprise network. There are multiple mechanisms that can be used with Office for persistence when an Office-based application is started; this can include the use of Office Template Macros and add-ins. A variety of features have been discovered in Outlook that can be abused to obtain persistence, such as Outlook rules, forms, and Home Page. These persistence mechanisms can work within Outlook or be used through Office 365.
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Tactics: Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Office 365, Windows
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Detection Strategies: Collect process execution information including process IDs (PID) and parent process IDs (PPID) and look for abnormal chains of activity resulting from Office processes. Non-standard process execution trees may also indicate suspicious or malicious behavior. If winword.exe is the parent process for suspicious processes and activity relating to other adversarial techniques, then it could indicate that the application was used maliciously. Many Office-related persistence mechanisms require changes to the Registry and for binaries, files, or scripts to be written to disk or existing files modified to include malicious scripts. Collect events related to Registry key creation and modification for keys that could be used for Office-based persistence. Microsoft has released a PowerShell script to safely gather mail forwarding rules and custom forms in your mail environment as well as steps to interpret the output. SensePost, whose tool Ruler can be used to carry out malicious rules, forms, and Home Page attacks, has released a tool to detect Ruler usage.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1137
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Technique ID: T1137.006
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Name: Office Application Startup: Add-ins
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Description: Adversaries may abuse Microsoft Office add-ins to obtain persistence on a compromised system. Office add-ins can be used to add functionality to Office programs. There are different types of add-ins that can be used by the various Office products; including Word/Excel add-in Libraries (WLL/XLL), VBA add-ins, Office Component Object Model (COM) add-ins, automation add-ins, VBA Editor (VBE), Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) add-ins, and Outlook add-ins. Add-ins can be used to obtain persistence because they can be set to execute code when an Office application starts.
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Tactics: Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Office 365, Windows
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Detection Strategies: Monitor and validate the Office trusted locations on the file system and audit the Registry entries relevant for enabling add-ins. Collect process execution information including process IDs (PID) and parent process IDs (PPID) and look for abnormal chains of activity resulting from Office processes. Non-standard process execution trees may also indicate suspicious or malicious behavior
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1137/006
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Technique ID: T1137.001
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Name: Office Application Startup: Office Template Macros
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Description: Adversaries may abuse Microsoft Office templates to obtain persistence on a compromised system. Microsoft Office contains templates that are part of common Office applications and are used to customize styles. The base templates within the application are used each time an application starts. Office Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros can be inserted into the base template and used to execute code when the respective Office application starts in order to obtain persistence. Examples for both Word and Excel have been discovered and published. By default, Word has a Normal.dotm template created that can be modified to include a malicious macro. Excel does not have a template file created by default, but one can be added that will automatically be loaded. Shared templates may also be stored and pulled from remote locations. Word Normal.dotm location:<br> C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dotm Excel Personal.xlsb location:<br> C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\PERSONAL.XLSB Adversaries may also change the location of the base template to point to their own by hijacking the application's search order, e.g. Word 2016 will first look for Normal.dotm under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\, or by modifying the GlobalDotName registry key. By modifying the GlobalDotName registry key an adversary can specify an arbitrary location, file name, and file extension to use for the template that will be loaded on application startup. To abuse GlobalDotName, adversaries may first need to register the template as a trusted document or place it in a trusted location. An adversary may need to enable macros to execute unrestricted depending on the system or enterprise security policy on use of macros.
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Tactics: Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Office 365, Windows
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Detection Strategies: Many Office-related persistence mechanisms require changes to the Registry and for binaries, files, or scripts to be written to disk or existing files modified to include malicious scripts. Collect events related to Registry key creation and modification for keys that could be used for Office-based persistence. Modification to base templates, like Normal.dotm, should also be investigated since the base templates should likely not contain VBA macros. Changes to the Office macro security settings should also be investigated.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1137/001
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Technique ID: T1137.002
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Name: Office Application Startup: Office Test
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Description: Adversaries may abuse the Microsoft Office "Office Test" Registry key to obtain persistence on a compromised system. An Office Test Registry location exists that allows a user to specify an arbitrary DLL that will be executed every time an Office application is started. This Registry key is thought to be used by Microsoft to load DLLs for testing and debugging purposes while developing Office applications. This Registry key is not created by default during an Office installation. There exist user and global Registry keys for the Office Test feature: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office test\Special\Perf HKEYMACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office test\Special\Perf Adversaries may add this Registry key and specify a malicious DLL that will be executed whenever an Office application, such as Word or Excel, is started.
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Tactics: Persistence
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Platforms Affected: Office 365, Windows
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Detection Strategies: Monitor for the creation of the Office Test Registry key. Many Office-related persistence mechanisms require changes to the Registry and for binaries, files, or scripts to be written to disk or existing files modified to include malicious scripts. Collect events related to Registry key creation and modification for keys that could be used for Office-based persistence. Since v13.52, Autoruns can detect tasks set up using the Office Test Registry key. Consider monitoring Office processes for anomalous DLL loads.
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More Information: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1137/002
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Technique ID: T1137.003
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