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T1563.002 RDP Hijacking

Adversaries may hijack a legitimate user’s remote desktop session to move laterally within an environment. Remote desktop is a common feature in operating systems. It allows a user to log into an interactive session with a system desktop graphical user interface on a remote system. Microsoft refers to its implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) as Remote Desktop Services (RDS).1

Adversaries may perform RDP session hijacking which involves stealing a legitimate user’s remote session. Typically, a user is notified when someone else is trying to steal their session. With System permissions and using Terminal Services Console, c:\windows\system32\tscon.exe [session number to be stolen], an adversary can hijack a session without the need for credentials or prompts to the user.2 This can be done remotely or locally and with active or disconnected sessions.3 It can also lead to Remote System Discovery and Privilege Escalation by stealing a Domain Admin or higher privileged account session. All of this can be done by using native Windows commands, but it has also been added as a feature in red teaming tools.4

Item Value
ID T1563.002
Sub-techniques T1563.001, T1563.002
Tactics TA0008
Platforms Windows
Permissions required SYSTEM
Version 1.0
Created 25 February 2020
Last Modified 23 March 2020

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0001 Axiom Axiom has targeted victims with remote administration tools including RDP.7
S0366 WannaCry WannaCry enumerates current remote desktop sessions and tries to execute the malware on each session.6

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1047 Audit Audit the Remote Desktop Users group membership regularly. Remove unnecessary accounts and groups from Remote Desktop Users groups.
M1042 Disable or Remove Feature or Program Disable the RDP service if it is unnecessary.
M1035 Limit Access to Resource Over Network Use remote desktop gateways.
M1030 Network Segmentation Enable firewall rules to block RDP traffic between network security zones within a network.
M1028 Operating System Configuration Change GPOs to define shorter timeouts sessions and maximum amount of time any single session can be active. Change GPOs to specify the maximum amount of time that a disconnected session stays active on the RD session host server.5
M1026 Privileged Account Management Consider removing the local Administrators group from the list of groups allowed to log in through RDP.
M1018 User Account Management Limit remote user permissions if remote access is necessary.

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component
DS0017 Command Command Execution
DS0028 Logon Session Logon Session Creation
DS0029 Network Traffic Network Traffic Content
DS0009 Process Process Creation

References

  1. Microsoft. (n.d.). Remote Desktop Services. Retrieved June 1, 2016. ↩

  2. Korznikov, A. (2017, March 17). Passwordless RDP Session Hijacking Feature All Windows versions. Retrieved December 11, 2017. ↩

  3. Beaumont, K. (2017, March 19). RDP hijacking — how to hijack RDS and RemoteApp sessions transparently to move through an organisation. Retrieved December 11, 2017. ↩

  4. NCC Group PLC. (2016, November 1). Kali Redsnarf. Retrieved December 11, 2017. ↩

  5. Microsoft. (n.d.). Configure Timeout and Reconnection Settings for Remote Desktop Services Sessions. Retrieved December 11, 2017. ↩

  6. Noerenberg, E., Costis, A., and Quist, N. (2017, May 16). A Technical Analysis of WannaCry Ransomware. Retrieved March 25, 2019. ↩

  7. Novetta. (n.d.). Operation SMN: Axiom Threat Actor Group Report. Retrieved November 12, 2014. ↩