T1558.004 AS-REP Roasting
Adversaries may reveal credentials of accounts that have disabled Kerberos preauthentication by Password Cracking Kerberos messages.1
Preauthentication offers protection against offline Password Cracking. When enabled, a user requesting access to a resource initiates communication with the Domain Controller (DC) by sending an Authentication Server Request (AS-REQ) message with a timestamp that is encrypted with the hash of their password. If and only if the DC is able to successfully decrypt the timestamp with the hash of the user’s password, it will then send an Authentication Server Response (AS-REP) message that contains the Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT) to the user. Part of the AS-REP message is signed with the user’s password.2
For each account found without preauthentication, an adversary may send an AS-REQ message without the encrypted timestamp and receive an AS-REP message with TGT data which may be encrypted with an insecure algorithm such as RC4. The recovered encrypted data may be vulnerable to offline Password Cracking attacks similarly to Kerberoasting and expose plaintext credentials. 13
An account registered to a domain, with or without special privileges, can be abused to list all domain accounts that have preauthentication disabled by utilizing Windows tools like PowerShell with an LDAP filter. Alternatively, the adversary may send an AS-REQ message for each user. If the DC responds without errors, the account does not require preauthentication and the AS-REP message will already contain the encrypted data. 13
Cracked hashes may enable Persistence, Privilege Escalation, and Lateral Movement via access to Valid Accounts.4
Item | Value |
---|---|
ID | T1558.004 |
Sub-techniques | T1558.001, T1558.002, T1558.003, T1558.004 |
Tactics | TA0006 |
Platforms | Windows |
Permissions required | User |
Version | 1.0 |
Created | 24 August 2020 |
Last Modified | 07 June 2021 |
Procedure Examples
ID | Name | Description |
---|---|---|
S1071 | Rubeus | Rubeus can reveal the credentials of accounts that have Kerberos pre-authentication disabled through AS-REP roasting.91110 |
Mitigations
ID | Mitigation | Description |
---|---|---|
M1047 | Audit | Kerberos preauthentication is enabled by default. Older protocols might not support preauthentication therefore it is possible to have this setting disabled. Make sure that all accounts have preauthentication whenever possible and audit changes to setting. Windows tools such as PowerShell may be used to easily find which accounts have preauthentication disabled. 83 |
M1041 | Encrypt Sensitive Information | Enable AES Kerberos encryption (or another stronger encryption algorithm), rather than RC4, where possible.5 |
M1027 | Password Policies | Ensure strong password length (ideally 25+ characters) and complexity for service accounts and that these passwords periodically expire. Also consider using Group Managed Service Accounts or another third party product such as password vaulting. 5 |
Detection
ID | Data Source | Data Component |
---|---|---|
DS0026 | Active Directory | Active Directory Credential Request |
References
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HarmJ0y. (2017, January 17). Roasting AS-REPs. Retrieved August 24, 2020. ↩↩↩
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Sanyal, M.. (2014, March 18). Kerberos Pre-Authentication: Why It Should Not Be Disabled. Retrieved August 25, 2020. ↩
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Jeff Warren. (2019, June 27). Cracking Active Directory Passwords with AS-REP Roasting. Retrieved August 24, 2020. ↩↩↩
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Medin, T. (2014, November). Attacking Kerberos - Kicking the Guard Dog of Hades. Retrieved March 22, 2018. ↩
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Metcalf, S. (2015, December 31). Cracking Kerberos TGS Tickets Using Kerberoast – Exploiting Kerberos to Compromise the Active Directory Domain. Retrieved March 22, 2018. ↩↩
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Bani, M. (2018, February 23). Detecting Kerberoasting activity using Azure Security Center. Retrieved March 23, 2018. ↩
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Microsoft. (2017, April 19). 4768(S, F): A Kerberos authentication ticket (TGT) was requested. Retrieved August 24, 2020. ↩
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Microsoft. (2012, July 18). Preauthentication. Retrieved August 24, 2020. ↩
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The DFIR Report. (2020, November 5). Ryuk Speed Run, 2 Hours to Ransom. Retrieved November 6, 2020. ↩
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The DFIR Report. (2020, October 8). Ryuk’s Return. Retrieved October 9, 2020. ↩