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Prasanna1
Staff
Staff
August 12, 2020

HUNTS- Credential Dumping (T1003)

  • August 12, 2020
  • 0 replies
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HUNTS- Credential Dumping (T1003)

Version 1.0

ATT&CK Technique: Credential Dumping (T1003)

What this playbook hunts for:

  • Inter-process access to lsass.exe by a non-standard (non-Windows/non-whitelisted) process. Lsass.exe stores credentials in Windows hosts, making it a target for attackers and malicious software. In hosts running Windows 8 (excluding Windows 8.1) and below, dumping the lsass.exe process can result in the exposure of plain text credentials including passwords and hashes.

How the playbook works:

  • Generates SIEM query for Sysmon Event ID 10 logs where lsass.exe is the target process

  • Enriches query results with a subsequent Sysmon Event ID 1 query that captures detailed process information on the process accessing lsass.exe

What results are expected:

  • Name, process ID, and path of process accessing lsass.exe

  • Lsass.exe access time

  • MD5 hash of the process accessing lsass.exe

  • Hostname of the computer where lsass.exe was accessed

  • User account which launched the process accessing lsass.exe

Common follow-on actions:

  • Enumerate logged on users (identify which credentials were exposed)

  • Detect lateral movement (identify other potentially compromised hosts)

  • Quarantine host

What inputs are necessary:

  • SIEM

  • Logs: Sysmon Event ID 1: Process creation

  • Logs: Sysmon Event ID 10: ProcessAccess

  • Hunt start time

What subroutine playbooks are needed:

  • Create and Link Alerts from Hunt (Host-based)

What configurations are needed:

  • Sysmon logging enabled with the following added to the configuration file under the SYSMON EVENT ID 10 section:
    <ProcessAccess onmatch="include">

                <TargetImage condition="is">C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe</TargetImage>

            </ProcessAccess>

False Positive Potential: Medium

  • Depending on the environment, many processes may legitimately need to access lsass.exe. It is highly recommended that the previously described Sysmon configuration be tested on a small group of systems before being deployed across the enterprise as a large number of events may be produced. 

  • Process accesses that are determined to be false positives should be added to the “excluded” section of the Sysmon configuration to create a whitelist and reduce the number of events generated. Additional filtering can also be added to the initial SIEM query.