COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-561

Windows Admin Shares with Stolen Credentials

An adversary guesses or obtains (i.e. steals or purchases) legitimate Windows administrator credentials (e.g. userID/password) to access Windows Admin Shares on a local machine or within a Windows domain.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

Extended description

Windows systems within the Windows NT family contain hidden network shares that are only accessible to system administrators. These shares allow administrators to remotely access all disk volumes on a network-connected system and further allow for files to be copied, written, and executed, along with other administrative actions. Example network shares include: C$, ADMIN$ and IPC$. If an adversary is able to obtain legitimate Windows credentials, the hidden shares can be accessed remotely, via server message block (SMB) or the Net utility, to transfer files and execute code. It is also possible for adversaries to utilize NTLM hashes to access administrator shares on systems with certain configuration and patch levels.

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

Explore

Acquire known Windows administrator credentials

The adversary must obtain known Windows administrator credentials in order to access the administrative network shares.

Techniques used

An adversary purchases breached Windows administrator credentials from the dark web.
An adversary leverages a key logger or phishing attack to steal administrator credentials as they are provided.
An adversary conducts a sniffing attack to steal Windows administrator credentials as they are transmitted.
An adversary gains access to a Windows domain system/files and exfiltrates Windows administrator password hashes.
An adversary examines outward-facing configuration and properties files to discover hardcoded Windows administrator credentials.

Experiment

Attempt domain authentication

Try each Windows administrator credential against the hidden network shares until the target grants access.

Techniques used

Manually or automatically enter each administrator credential through the target's interface.

Exploit

Malware Execution

An adversary can remotely execute malware within the administrative network shares to infect other systems within the domain.

Data Exfiltration

The adversary can remotely obtain sensitive data contained within the administrative network shares.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

The system/application is connected to the Windows domain.
The target administrative share allows remote use of local admin credentials to log into domain systems.
The adversary possesses a list of known Windows administrator credentials that exist on the target domain.

Skills required

Low: Once an adversary obtains a known Windows credential, leveraging it is trivial.

Resources required

A list of known Windows administrator credentials for the targeted domain.

Detection

What are the indicators of the attack?

Data is being transferred and/or removed from administrative network shares.

Suspicious or Malicious software is executed within administrative network shares.

Suspicious or Malicious software is downloaded/installed on systems within the domain.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Gain Privileges

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Access Control, Authentication

Read Data

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Authorization

Modify Data

Affected scopes: Integrity

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

Do not reuse local administrator account credentials across systems.

Deny remote use of local admin credentials to log into domain systems.

Do not allow accounts to be a local administrator on more than one system.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail

APT32 has leveraged Windows' built-in Net utility to use Windows Administrative Shares to copy and execute remote malware. [ REF-579 ]

Example instance 2Detail

In May 2017, APT15 laterally moved within a Windows domain via Windows Administrative Shares to copy files to and from compromised host systems. This further allowed for the remote execution of malware. [ REF-578 ]