Skip to content

T1212 Exploitation for Credential Access

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to collect credentials. Exploitation of a software vulnerability occurs when an adversary takes advantage of a programming error in a program, service, or within the operating system software or kernel itself to execute adversary-controlled code. 

Credentialing and authentication mechanisms may be targeted for exploitation by adversaries as a means to gain access to useful credentials or circumvent the process to gain authenticated access to systems. One example of this is MS14-068, which targets Kerberos and can be used to forge Kerberos tickets using domain user permissions.63 Another example of this is replay attacks, in which the adversary intercepts data packets sent between parties and then later replays these packets. If services don’t properly validate authentication requests, these replayed packets may allow an adversary to impersonate one of the parties and gain unauthorized access or privileges.125

Such exploitation has been demonstrated in cloud environments as well. For example, adversaries have exploited vulnerabilities in public cloud infrastructure that allowed for unintended authentication token creation and renewal.4

Exploitation for credential access may also result in Privilege Escalation depending on the process targeted or credentials obtained.

Item Value
ID T1212
Sub-techniques
Tactics TA0006
Platforms Identity Provider, Linux, Windows, macOS
Version 1.6
Created 18 April 2018
Last Modified 24 October 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
C0049 Leviathan Australian Intrusions Leviathan exploited vulnerable network appliances during Leviathan Australian Intrusions, leading to the collection and exfiltration of valid credentials.11
G1048 UNC3886 UNC3886 exploited CVE-2022-22948 in VMware vCenter to obtain encrypted credentials from the vCenter postgresDB.10

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1013 Application Developer Guidance Application developers should consider taking measures to validate authentication requests by enabling one-time passwords, providing timestamps or sequence numbers for messages sent, using digital signatures, and/or using random session keys.21
M1048 Application Isolation and Sandboxing Make it difficult for adversaries to advance their operation through exploitation of undiscovered or unpatched vulnerabilities by using sandboxing. Other types of virtualization and application microsegmentation may also mitigate the impact of some types of exploitation. Risks of additional exploits and weaknesses in these systems may still exist.9
M1050 Exploit Protection Security applications that look for behavior used during exploitation such as Windows Defender Exploit Guard (WDEG) and the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) can be used to mitigate some exploitation behavior.7 Control flow integrity checking is another way to potentially identify and stop a software exploit from occurring.8 Many of these protections depend on the architecture and target application binary for compatibility and may not work for software targeted for defense evasion.
M1019 Threat Intelligence Program Develop a robust cyber threat intelligence capability to determine what types and levels of threat may use software exploits and 0-days against a particular organization.
M1051 Update Software Update software regularly by employing patch management for internal enterprise endpoints and servers.

References

  1. Bugcrowd. (n.d.). Replay Attack. Retrieved September 27, 2023. ↩↩

  2. Justin Schamotta. (2022, October 28). What is a replay attack?. Retrieved September 27, 2023. ↩↩

  3. Metcalf, S. (2015, May 03). Detecting Forged Kerberos Ticket (Golden Ticket & Silver Ticket) Use in Active Directory. Retrieved December 23, 2015. ↩

  4. Microsoft Threat Intelligence. (2023, July 14). Analysis of Storm-0558 techniques for unauthorized email access. Retrieved September 18, 2023. ↩

  5. Microsoft Threat Intelligence. (2023, June 21). Credential Attacks. Retrieved September 12, 2024. ↩

  6. Microsoft. (2014, November 18). Vulnerability in Kerberos Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3011780). Retrieved December 23, 2015. ↩

  7. Nunez, N. (2017, August 9). Moving Beyond EMET II – Windows Defender Exploit Guard. Retrieved March 12, 2018. ↩

  8. Wikipedia. (2018, January 11). Control-flow integrity. Retrieved March 12, 2018. ↩

  9. Goodin, D. (2017, March 17). Virtual machine escape fetches $105,000 at Pwn2Own hacking contest - updated. Retrieved March 12, 2018. ↩

  10. Punsaen Boonyakarn, Shawn Chew, Logeswaran Nadarajan, Mathew Potaczek, Jakub Jozwiak, and Alex Marvi. (2024, June 18). Cloaked and Covert: Uncovering UNC3886 Espionage Operations. Retrieved September 24, 2024. ↩

  11. CISA et al. (2024, July 8). People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of State Security APT40 Tradecraft in Action. Retrieved February 3, 2025. ↩