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Abusing Active Directory ACLs/ACEs

Context

This lab is to abuse weak permissions of Active Directory Discretionary Access Control Lists (DACLs) and Acccess Control Entries (ACEs) that make up DACLs.

Active Directory objects such as users and groups are securable objects and DACL/ACEs define who can read/modify those objects (i.e change account name, reset password, etc).

An example of ACEs for the "Domain Admins" securable object can be seen here:

Some of the Active Directory object permissions and types that we as attackers are interested in:

  • GenericAll - full rights to the object (add users to a group or reset user's password)

  • GenericWrite - update object's attributes (i.e logon script)

  • WriteOwner - change object owner to attacker controlled user take over the object

  • WriteDACL - modify object's ACEs and give attacker full control right over the object

  • AllExtendedRights - ability to add user to a group or reset password

  • ForceChangePassword - ability to change user's password

  • Self (Self-Membership) - ability to add yourself to a group

In this lab, we are going to explore and try to exploit most of the above ACEs.

Execution

GenericAll on User

Using powerview, let's check if our attacking user spotless has GenericAll rights on the AD object for the user delegate:

We can see that indeed our user spotless has the GenericAll rights, effectively enabling the attacker to take over the account:

We can reset user's delegate password without knowing the current password:

GenericAll on Group

Let's see if Domain admins group has any weak permissions. First of, let's get its distinguishedName:

We can see that our attacking user spotless has GenericAll rights once again:

Effectively, this allows us to add ourselves (the user spotless) to the Domain Admin group:

Same could be achieved with Active Directory or PowerSploit module:

GenericAll / GenericWrite / Write on Computer

If you have these privileges on a Computer object, you can pull Kerberos Resource-based Constrained Delegation: Computer Object Take Over off.

WriteProperty on Group

If our controlled user has WriteProperty right on All objects for Domain Admin group:

We can again add ourselves to the Domain Admins group and escalate privileges:

Self (Self-Membership) on Group

Another privilege that enables the attacker adding themselves to a group:

WriteProperty (Self-Membership)

One more privilege that enables the attacker adding themselves to a group:

ForceChangePassword

If we have ExtendedRight on User-Force-Change-Password object type, we can reset the user's password without knowing their current password:

Doing the same with powerview:

Another method that does not require fiddling with password-secure-string conversion:

...or a one liner if no interactive session is not available:

WriteOwner on Group

Note how before the attack the owner of Domain Admins is Domain Admins:

After the ACE enumeration, if we find that a user in our control has WriteOwner rights on ObjectType:All

...we can change the Domain Admins object's owner to our user, which in our case is spotless. Note that the SID specified with -Identity is the SID of the Domain Admins group:

GenericWrite on User

WriteProperty on an ObjectType, which in this particular case is Script-Path, allows the attacker to overwrite the logon script path of the delegate user, which means that the next time, when the user delegate logs on, their system will execute our malicious script:

Below shows the user's delegate logon script field got updated in the AD:

WriteDACL + WriteOwner

If you are the owner of a group, like I'm the owner of a Test AD group:

Which you can of course do through powershell:

And you have a WriteDACL on that AD object:

...you can give yourself GenericAll privileges with a sprinkle of ADSI sorcery:

Which means you now fully control the AD object:

This effectively means that you can now add new users to the group.

Interesting to note that I could not abuse these privileges by using Active Directory module and Set-Acl / Get-Acl cmdlets:

References

BloodHound 1.3 – The ACL Attack Path Updatewald0.com
LogoActiveDirectoryRights Enum (System.DirectoryServices)MicrosoftLearn
LogoEscalating privileges with ACLs in Active DirectoryFox-IT International blog
Scanning for Active Directory Privileges & Privileged AccountsActive Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
LogoActiveDirectoryAccessRule Constructor (System.DirectoryServices)MicrosoftLearn

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