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MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

Requirements

Coercion

  • Valid Active Directory domain credentials
  • Connectivity to SMB (TCP/445) on a coercion target:
    • TAKEOVER-5.1: Coerce primary site server
    • TAKEOVER-5.2: Coerce passive site server
  • Connectivity from the coercion target to SMB (TCP/445) on the relay server
  • Coercion target settings:
    • BlockNTLM = 0 or not present, or = 1 and BlockNTLMServerExceptionList contains attacker relay server [DEFAULT]
    • RestrictSendingNTLMTraffic = 0, 1, or not present, or = 2 and ClientAllowedNTLMServers contains attacker relay server [DEFAULT]
  • Domain controller settings:
    • RestrictNTLMInDomain = 0 or not present, or is configured with any value and DCAllowedNTLMServers contains coercion target [DEFAULT]

Relay

  • Connectivity from the relay server to HTTPS (TCP/443) on the relay target hosting the SMS Provider role
  • Relay target domain controller settings:
    • RestrictNTLMInDomain = 0 or not present, or is configured with any value and DCAllowedNTLMServers contains relay target [DEFAULT]
    • LmCompatibilityLevel < 5 or not present, or = 5 and LmCompatibilityLevel >= 3 on the coercion target [DEFAULT]

Summary

The SMS Provider is a SCCM site server role installed by default on the site server when configuring a primary site or central administration site. The role can optionally be installed on additional SCCM site systems for high availability configurations. The SMS Provider is a Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) provider that performs as an intermediary for accessing and modifying data stored in the site database. Access to the SMS Provider is controlled via membership of the the SMS Admins local security group on each site server. The site server computer account is a member of the SMS Admins security group on each SMS Provider in a site by default. The SMS Provider also provides access to the site database via the administration service (AdminService) REST API and uses Microsoft Negotiate for authentication. In default configurations, the AdminService is vulnerable to NTLM relay attacks.

Impact

This technique may allow an attacker to relay a site server’s domain computer account to a remote SMS Provider and elevate their privileges to “Full Administrator” for the SCCM hierarchy. If successful, this technique enables an attacker to execute arbitrary programs on any client device that is online as SYSTEM, the currently logged on user, or as a specific user when they next log on.

Defensive IDs

Extended Protection for Authentication (EPA) is not currently supported by the AdminService (as of March 2024), so cannot be configured to prevent relay to the AdminService.

Subtechniques

  • TAKEOVER-5.1: Coerce primary site server
  • TAKEOVER-5.2: Coerce passive site server

Examples

  1. Use SCCMHunter to profile SCCM infrastructure:
  2. On the attacker relay server, start ntlmrelayx (currently, Garrett Foster’s fork/pull request here must be used until it is merged into impacket), targeting the URL of the AdminService API on the remote SMS Provider identified in the previous step, and provide a target account to add as a Full Administrator:
  3. From the attacker host, coerce NTLM authentication from the site server via SMB, targeting the relay server’s IP address:
    After a few seconds, you should receive an SMB connection on the relay server that is forwarded to the AdminService on the SMS Provider to add a Full Administrator:
  4. Confirm that the account now has the Full Administrator role by querying WMI on an SMS Provider:

References