2/ There exists a ton of different techniques of how attackers can relaying credentials to another host in order to raise their privileges or get a shell on the target server.
3/ @TrustedSec has written an excellent blog post about the different relaying techniques, how they work and which prerequisites have to be in place that the attack is successful. [1]
4/ "In order to assess the effectiveness of relaying attacks, we will need to learn more about our network environment. In order to succeed with ‘classic’ relaying attacks, some prerequisites must be met:
6/ There must be broadcast traffic in the environment. Classic examples of this are DNS replacement protocols like Link Local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) and NetBIOS Name Resolution (NBT-NS)." [1]
7/ As you might have read the blog and realised that attackers (again!) have different techniques at hand, how can we protect our network against these techniques?
One solution is to enable SMB signing, as this will prevent relaying because all SMB traffic must be signed.
8/ We can not only enable SMB signing, but also LDAP signing.
And of course, disable Windows Proxy Auto Detection (WPAD) and LLMNR/NBNS (#PingCastle check).
This is the last thread in this AD hardening measure series, but there would still be so much to discuss 😅
Here are more points you should focus on to defend your networks even better.
"Administrative accounts should never be enabled for delegation.
You can prevent these privileged accounts from being targeted by enabling the ‘Account is sensitive and cannot be delegated’ flag on them. You can optionally add these accounts to the ‘Protected Users’ group.
2/ A running print spooler service on domain controllers is still a relatively common finding in our AD assessments, even though an attack path via spooler service and unconstrained delegations have been known for years. [1]
3/ Apart from the (older) attack technique with unconstrained delegations (see above), the printer spooler has had various critical vulnerabilities over the last two years. [3]
2/ To raise the bar again, add critical accounts to the Protected Users Security Group.
"This group provides protections over and above just preventing delegation and makes them even more secure; however, it may cause operational issues, so it is worth testing in your env." [2]
3/ Benefits:
1⃣ Credential delegation (CredSSP) will not cache the user's plain text credentials [..]
2⃣ Beginning with Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Digest will not cache the user's plain text credentials even when Windows Digest is enabled.
A customer called us because he discovered two new computers within his computer objects that did not match his naming scheme.
3/ During the detailed investigation of the incident, it turned out that these SAMTHEADMIN objects were part of an exploit code that (if successful) would give administrative rights to a standard domain user.
2/ Strictly speaking not part of a guide about hardening AD, but I must stress once again the importance of logging executed PowerShell code on clients and servers:
3/ There are other opinions about PowerShell Script Block logging because, potentially, passwords or other sensitive data could end up in event logs, and authenticated users on the workstation or server could read these logs, thus giving away the sensitive data. [1]