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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-6.1: Coerce primary site server
    • TAKEOVER-6.2: 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 SMB (TCP/445) on the relay target
  • Relay target settings:
    • RequireSecuritySignature = 0 or not present [DEFAULT]
    • RestrictReceivingNTLMTraffic = 0 or not present [DEFAULT]
    • Coercion target is local admin (to access RPC/admin shares)
  • 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. An attacker who is able to successfully coerce NTLM authentication from a site server can escalate to “Full Administrator” by elevating to “NT\AUTHORITY SYSTEM” on the SMS Provider.

Impact

This technique may allow an attacker to relay a site server 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

Examples

  1. Use SCCMHunter to profile SCCM infrastructure:
  2. On the attacker relay server, start ntlmrelayx, targeting the SMB service remote SMS Provider identified in the previous step:
  3. From the attacker host, coerce NTLM authentication from the site server 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 SMB service on the SMS provider and the authenticated session is held open
  4. Proxy smbexec.py in the context of the site server through the authenticated session to establish interactive access on the target host as NT\AUTHORITY SYSTEM:

References