CAPEC-560: Use of Known Domain Credentials
An adversary guesses or obtains (i.e. steals or purchases) legitimate credentials (e.g. userID/password) to achieve authentication and to perform authorized actions under the guise of an authenticated user or service.
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Overview
Attacks leveraging trusted credentials typically result in the adversary laterally moving within the local network, since users are often allowed to login to systems/applications within the network using the same password. This further allows the adversary to obtain sensitive data, download/install malware on the system, pose as a legitimate user for social engineering purposes, and more. Attacks on known passwords generally rely on the primary fact that users often reuse the same username/password combination for a variety of systems, applications, and services, coupled with poor password policies on the target system or application. Adversaries can also utilize known passwords to target Single Sign On (SSO) or cloud-based applications and services, which often don't verify the authenticity of the user's input. Known credentials are usually obtained by an adversary via a system/application breach and/or by purchasing dumps of credentials on the dark web. These credentials may be further gleaned via exposed configuration and properties files that contain system passwords, database connection strings, and other sensitive data.
How the attack works
The phases an attacker typically follows to carry out this attack.
- Step 1Explore
[Acquire known credentials] The adversary must obtain known credentials in order to access the target system, application, or service.
- An adversary purchases breached username/password combinations or leaked hashed passwords from the dark web.
- An adversary leverages a key logger or phishing attack to steal user credentials as they are provided.
- An adversary conducts a sniffing attack to steal credentials as they are transmitted.
- An adversary gains access to a database and exfiltrates password hashes.
- An adversary examines outward-facing configuration and properties files to discover hardcoded credentials.
- Step 2Explore
[Determine target's password policy] Determine the password policies of the target system/application to determine if the known credentials fit within the specified criteria.
- Determine minimum and maximum allowed password lengths.
- Determine format of allowed passwords (whether they are required or allowed to contain numbers, special characters, etc., or whether they are allowed to contain words from the dictionary).
- Determine account lockout policy (a strict account lockout policy will prevent brute force attacks if multiple passwords are known for a single user account).
- Step 3Experiment
[Attempt authentication] Try each credential until the target grants access.
- Manually or automatically enter each credential through the target's interface.
- Step 4Exploit
[Impersonate] An adversary can use successful experiments or authentications to impersonate an authorized user or system, or to laterally move within a system or application
- Step 5Exploit
[Spoofing] Malicious data can be injected into the target system or into a victim user's system by an adversary. The adversary can also pose as a legitimate user to perform social engineering attacks.
- Step 6Exploit
[Data Exfiltration] The adversary can obtain sensitive data contained within the system or application.
What the attacker needs
Prerequisites
- The system/application uses one factor password based authentication, SSO, and/or cloud-based authentication.
- The system/application does not have a sound password policy that is being enforced.
- The system/application does not implement an effective password throttling mechanism.
- The adversary possesses a list of known user accounts and corresponding passwords that may exist on the target.
Skills required
- Low skill: Once an adversary obtains a known credential, leveraging it is trivial.
Resources required
- A list of known credentials.
- A custom script that leverages the credential list to launch an attack.
Consequences
What a successful CAPEC-560 attack can achieve.
Gain Privileges
Affects: Confidentiality, Access Control, Authentication
Read Data
Affects: Confidentiality, Authorization
Modify Data
Affects: Integrity
How to mitigate it
Defenses that reduce the risk of CAPEC-560.
- Leverage multi-factor authentication for all authentication services and prior to granting an entity access to the domain network.
- Create a strong password policy and ensure that your system enforces this policy.
- Ensure users are not reusing username/password combinations for multiple systems, applications, or services.
- 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.
- Implement an intelligent password throttling mechanism. Care must be taken to assure that these mechanisms do not excessively enable account lockout attacks such as CAPEC-2.
- Monitor system and domain logs for abnormal credential access.
How to detect it
Indicators that this attack may be underway.
- Authentication attempts use credentials that have been used previously by the account in question.
- Authentication attempts are originating from IP addresses or locations that are inconsistent with the user's normal IP addresses or locations.
- Data is being transferred and/or removed from systems/applications within the network.
- Suspicious or Malicious software is downloaded/installed on systems within the domain.
- Messages from a legitimate user appear to contain suspicious links or communications not consistent with the user's normal behavior.
Examples
Throughout 2015 and 2016, APT28 — also known as Pawn Storm, Sednit, Fancy Bear, Sofacy, and STRONTIUM — leveraged stolen credentials to infiltrate the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the United States Army, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS-CAS), and more. In most cases, the legitimate credentials were obtained via calculated spearphishing, tabnabbing, and DNS attacks targeted at corporate webmail systems. APT28 also executed several watering hole attacks, in addition to exploiting several zero-day vulnerabilities within Flash and Windows. The stolen credentials were then utilized to maintain authenticated access, laterally move within the local network, and exfiltrate sensitive information including DNC emails and personal medical records of numerous athletes. [REF-571]
In early 2019, FIN6 exploited stolen credentials from an organization within the engineering industry to laterally move within an environment via the Windows’ Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Multiple servers were subsequently infected with malware to create malware distribution servers, which were used to distribute the LockerGoga ransomware. [REF-573]
Terminology & mappings
Mapped taxonomies
- ATTACK: Valid Accounts (1078)
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about CAPEC-560.
- What is CAPEC-560?
- An adversary guesses or obtains (i.e. steals or purchases) legitimate credentials (e.g. userID/password) to achieve authentication and to perform authorized actions under the guise of an authenticated user or service.
- How does a Use of Known Domain Credentials attack work?
- It typically unfolds over 6 phases. It begins with: [Acquire known credentials] The adversary must obtain known credentials in order to access the target system, application, or service.
- How do you prevent CAPEC-560?
- Leverage multi-factor authentication for all authentication services and prior to granting an entity access to the domain network.
- What weaknesses does CAPEC-560 target?
- CAPEC-560 exploits 8 CWE weaknesses, including CWE-262 (Not Using Password Aging), CWE-263 (Password Aging with Long Expiration), CWE-307 (Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts), CWE-308 (Use of Single-factor Authentication).
- How severe is CAPEC-560?
- MITRE rates CAPEC-560 as High severity with high likelihood of attack.
References
Attack-pattern data is sourced from the MITRE CAPEC catalog (v3.9). Weakness associations link to the corresponding CWE entries on RadicalNotion.AI.
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