T1649: Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates
| View on MITRE ATT&CK | T1649 |
|---|---|
| Tactic(s) | Credential Access |
Data from MITRE ATT&CK®:
Adversaries may steal or forge certificates used for authentication to access remote systems or resources. Digital certificates are often used to sign and encrypt messages and/or files. Certificates are also used as authentication material. For example, Azure AD device certificates and Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) certificates bind to an identity and can be used as credentials for domain accounts.(Citation: O365 Blog Azure AD Device IDs)(Citation: Microsoft AD CS Overview)
Authentication certificates can be both stolen and forged. For example, AD CS certificates can be stolen from encrypted storage (in the Registry or files)(Citation: APT29 Deep Look at Credential Roaming), misplaced certificate files (i.e. Unsecured Credentials), or directly from the Windows certificate store via various crypto APIs.(Citation: SpecterOps Certified Pre Owned)(Citation: GitHub CertStealer)(Citation: GitHub GhostPack Certificates) With appropriate enrollment rights, users and/or machines within a domain can also request and/or manually renew certificates from enterprise certificate authorities (CA). This enrollment process defines various settings and permissions associated with the certificate. Of note, the certificate’s extended key usage (EKU) values define signing, encryption, and authentication use cases, while the certificate’s subject alternative name (SAN) values define the certificate owner’s alternate names.(Citation: Medium Certified Pre Owned)
Abusing certificates for authentication credentials may enable other behaviors such as Lateral Movement. Certificate-related misconfigurations may also enable opportunities for Privilege Escalation, by way of allowing users to impersonate or assume privileged accounts or permissions via the identities (SANs) associated with a certificate. These abuses may also enable Persistence via stealing or forging certificates that can be used as Valid Accounts for the duration of the certificate's validity, despite user password resets. Authentication certificates can also be stolen and forged for machine accounts.
Adversaries who have access to root (or subordinate) CA certificate private keys (or mechanisms protecting/managing these keys) may also establish Persistence by forging arbitrary authentication certificates for the victim domain (known as “golden” certificates).(Citation: Medium Certified Pre Owned) Adversaries may also target certificates and related services in order to access other forms of credentials, such as Golden Ticket ticket-granting tickets (TGT) or NTLM plaintext.(Citation: Medium Certified Pre Owned)
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Cyber Threat Graph Context
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Mitigations for this technique
MITRE ATT&CK Mitigations
Audit
Perform audits or scans of systems, permissions, insecure software, insecure configurations, etc. to identify potential weaknesses.Disable or Remove Feature or Program
Remove or deny access to unnecessary and potentially vulnerable software to prevent abuse by adversaries.Active Directory Configuration
Configure Active Directory to prevent use of certain techniques; use SID Filtering, etc.Encrypt Sensitive Information
Protect sensitive information with strong encryption.How to detect this technique
MITRE ATT&CK Data Components
Logon Session Creation (Logon Session)
Initial construction of a successful new user logon following an authentication attempt. (e.g. Windows EID 4624, /var/log/utmp, or /var/log/wmtp)File Access (File)
Opening a file, which makes the file contents available to the requestor (ex: Windows EID 4663)Active Directory Credential Request (Active Directory)
A user requested active directory credentials, such as a ticket or token (ex: Windows EID 4769)Active Directory Object Modification (Active Directory)
Changes made to an active directory object (ex: Windows EID 5163 or 5136)Windows Registry Key Access (Windows Registry)
Opening a Registry Key, typically to read the associated value (ex: Windows EID 4656)Application Log Content (Application Log)
Logging, messaging, and other artifacts provided by third-party services (ex: metrics, errors, and/or alerts from mail/web applications)Command Execution (Command)
The execution of a line of text, potentially with arguments, created from program code (e.g. a cmdlet executed via powershell.exe, interactive commands like >dir, shell executions, etc. )Control Validation Tests for this Technique
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Sigma Detections for this Technique
SP800-53 Controls
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