Written by: Matthew McWhirt, Bhavesh Dhake, Emilio Oropeza, Gautam Krishnan, Stuart Carrera, Greg Blaum, Michael Rudden

Background

Threat actors leverage destructive malware to destroy data, eliminate evidence of malicious activity, or manipulate systems in a way that renders them inoperable. Destructive cyberattacks can be a powerful means to achieve strategic or tactical objectives; however, the risk of reprisal is likely to limit the frequency of use to very select incidents. Destructive cyberattacks can include destructive malware, wipers, or modified ransomware.

When conflict erupts, cyber attacks are an inexpensive and easily deployable weapon. It should come as no surprise that instability leads to increases in attacks. This blog post provides proactive recommendations for organizations to prioritize for protecting against a destructive attack within an environment. The recommendations include practical and scalable methods that can help protect organizations from not only destructive attacks, but potential incidents where a threat actor is attempting to perform reconnaissance, escalate privileges, laterally move, maintain access, and achieve their mission. 

The detection opportunities outlined in this blog post are meant to act as supplementary monitoring to existing security tools. Organizations should leverage endpoint and network security tools as additional preventative and detective measures. These tools use a broad spectrum of detective capabilities, including signatures and heuristics, to detect malicious activity with a reasonable degree of fidelity. The custom detection opportunities referenced in this blog post are correlated to specific threat actor behavior and are meant to trigger anomalous activity that is identified by its divergence from normal patterns. Effective monitoring is dependent on a thorough understanding of an organization's unique environment and usage of pre-established baselines.

Organizational Resilience

While the core focus of this blog post is aligned to technical- and tactical-focused security controls, technical preparation and recovery are not the only strategies. Organizations that include crisis preparation and orchestration as key components of security governance can naturally adopt a "living" resilience posture. This includes:

• Out-of-Band Incident Command and Communication: Establish a pre-validated, "out-of-band" communication platform that is completely decoupled from the corporate identity plane. This ensures that the key stakeholders and third-party support teams can coordinate and communicate securely, even if the primary communication platform is unavailable.

• Defined Operational Contingency and Recovery Plans: Establish baseline operational requirements, including manual procedures for vital business functions to ensure continuity during restoration or rebuild efforts. Organizations must also develop prioritized application recovery sequences and map the essential dependencies needed to establish a secure foundation for recovery goals.

• Pre-Establish Trusted Third-Party Vendor Relationships: Based on the range of technologies and platforms vital to business operations, develop predefined agreements with external partners to ensure access to specialists for legal / contractual requirements, incident response, remediation, recovery, and ransomware negotiations.

• Practice and Refine the Recovery: Conduct exercises that validate the end-to-end restoration of mission-critical services using isolated, immutable backups and out-of-band communication channels, ensuring that recovery timelines (RTO) and data integrity (RPO) are tested, practiced, and current. 

Google Security Operations

Google Security Operations (SecOps) customers have access to these broad category rules and more under the Mandiant Intel Emerging Threats, Mandiant Frontline Threats, Mandiant Hunting Rules, CDIR SCC Enhanced Data Destruction Alerts rule packs. The activity discussed in the blog post is detected in Google SecOps under the rule names:

• BABYWIPER File Erasure

• Secure Evidence Destruction And Cleanup Commands

• CMD Launching Application Self Delete

• Copy Binary From Downloads

• Rundll32 Execution Of Dll Function Name Containing Special Character

• Services Launching Cmd

• System Process Execution Via Scheduled Task

• Dllhost Masquerading

• Backdoor Writing Dll To Disk For Injection

• Multiple Exclusions Added To Windows Defender In Single Command

• Path Exclusion Added to Windows Defender

• Registry Change to CurrentControlSet Services

• Powershell Set Content Value Of 0

• Overwrite Disk Using DD Utility

• Bcdedit Modifications Via Command

• Disabling Crash Dump For Drive Wiping

• Suspicious Wbadmin Commands

• Fsutil File Zero Out

Recommendations Summary

Table 1 provides a high-level overview of guidance in this blog post.

1. External-Facing Assets

Identify, Enumerate, and Harden

To protect against a threat actor exploiting vulnerabilities or misconfigurations via an external-facing vector, organizations must determine the scope of applications and organization-managed services that are externally accessible. Externally accessible applications and services (including both on-premises and cloud) are often targeted by threat actors for initial access by exploiting known vulnerabilities, brute-forcing common or default credentials, or authenticating using valid credentials. 

To proactively identify and validate external-facing applications and services, consider:

• Leveraging a vulnerability scanning technology to identify assets and associated vulnerabilities. 

• Performing a focused vulnerability assessment or penetration test with the goal of identifying external-facing vectors that could be leveraged for authentication and access.

• Verifying with technology vendors if the products leveraged by an organization for external-facing services require patches or updates to mitigate known vulnerabilities. 

Any identified vulnerabilities should not only be patched and hardened, but the identified technology platforms should also be reviewed to ensure that evidence of suspicious activity or technology/device modifications have not already occurred.

The following table provides an overview of capabilities to proactively review and identify external-facing assets and resources within common cloud-based infrastructures.

Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication

External-facing assets that leverage single-factor authentication (SFA) are highly susceptible to brute-forcing attacks, password spraying, or unauthorized remote access using valid (stolen) credentials. External-facing applications and services that currently allow for SFA should be configured to support multi-factor authentication (MFA). Additionally, MFA should be leveraged for accessing not only on-premises external-facing managed infrastructure, but also for cloud-based resources (e.g., software-as-a-service [SaaS] such as Microsoft 365 [M365]). 

When configuring multifactor authentication, the following methods are commonly considered (and ranked from most to least secure):

• Fast IDentity Online 2 (FIDO2)/WebAuthn security keys or passkeys

• Software/hardware Open Authentication (OAUTH) token

• Authenticator application (e.g., Duo/Microsoft [MS] Authenticator/Okta Verify)

• Time-based One Time Password (TOTP)

• Push notification (least preferred option) using number matching when possible

• Phone call

• Short Message Service (SMS) verification

• Email-based verification

Risks of Specific MFA Methods

Push Notifications

If an organization is leveraging push notifications for MFA (e.g., a notification that requires acceptance via an application or automated call to a mobile device), threat actors can exploit this type of MFA configuration for attempted access, as a user may inadvertently accept a push notification on their device without the context of where the authentication was initiated. 

Phone/SMS Verification

If an organization is leveraging phone calls or SMS-based verification for MFA, these methods are not encrypted and are susceptible to potentially being intercepted by a threat actor. These methods are also vulnerable if a threat actor is able to transfer an employee's phone number to an attacker-controlled subscriber identification module (SIM) card. This would result in the MFA notifications being routed to the threat actor instead of the intended employee. 

Email-Based Verification

If an organization is leveraging email-based verification for validating access or for retrieving MFA codes, and a threat actor has already established the ability to access the email of their target, the actor could potentially also retrieve the email(s) to validate and complete the MFA process. 

If any of these MFA methods are leveraged, consider:

• Training remote users to never accept or respond to a logon notification when they are not actively attempting to log in.

• Establishing a method for users to report suspicious MFA notifications, as this could be indicative of a compromised account.

• Ensuring there are messaging policies in place to prevent the auto-forwarding of email messages outside the organization.

Time-Based One-Time Password

Time-based one-time password (TOTP) relies on a shared secret, called a seed, known by both the authenticating system and the authenticator possessed by an end user. If a seed is compromised, the TOTP authenticator can be duplicated and used by a threat actor.

Detection Opportunities for External-Facing Assets and MFA Attempts

2. Critical Asset Protections

Domain Controller and Critical Asset Backups

Organizations should verify that backups for domain controllers and critical assets are available and protected against unauthorized access or modification. Backup processes and procedures should be exercised on a continual basis. Backups should be protected and stored within secured enclaves that include both network and identity segmentation. 

If an organization's Active Directory (AD) were to become corrupted or unavailable due to ransomware or a potentially destructive attack, restoring Active Directory from domain controller backups may be the only viable option to reconstitute domain services. The following domain controller recovery and reconstitution best practices should be proactively reviewed by organizations: 

• Verify that there is a known good backup of domain controllers and SYSVOL shares (e.g., from a domain controller – backup C:\Windows\SYSVOL).

  • For domain controllers, a system state backup is preferred. 
    
    Note: For a system state backup to occur, Windows Server Backup must be installed as a feature on a domain controller.

  • The following command can be run from an elevated command prompt to initiate a system state backup of a domain controller.

wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backuptarget:<targetDrive>:

Figure 1: Command to perform a system state backup

• • The following command can be run from an elevated command prompt to perform a SYSVOL backup. (Manage auditing and security log permissions must also be configured for the account performing the backup.)

robocopy c:\windows\sysvol c:\sysvol-backup /copyall /mir /b /r:0 /xd

Figure 2: Command to perform a SYSVOL backup

• Proactively identify domain controllers that hold flexible single master operation (FSMO) roles, as these domain controllers will need to be prioritized for recovery in the event that a full domain restoration is required. 

netdom query fsmo

Figure 3: Command to identify domain controllers that hold FSMO roles

• Offline backups: Ensure offline domain controller backups are secured and stored separately from online backups. 

• Encryption: Backup data should be encrypted both during transit (over the wire) and when at rest or mirrored for offsite storage. 

• DSRM Password validation: Ensure that the Directory Services Restore Mode (DSRM) password is set to a known value for each domain controller. This password is required when performing an authoritative or nonauthoritative domain controller restoration. 

• Configure alerting for backup operations: Backup products and technologies should be configured to detect and provide alerting for operations critical to the availability and integrity of backup data (e.g., deletion of backup data, purging of backup metadata, restoration events, media errors). 

• Enforce role-based access control (RBAC): Access to backup media and the applications that govern and manage data backups should use RBAC to restrict the scope of accounts that have access to the stored data and configuration parameters. 

• Testing and verification: Both authoritative and nonauthoritative domain controller restoration processes should be documented and tested on a regular basis. The same testing and verification processes should be enforced for critical assets and data.

Business Continuity Planning

Critical asset recovery is dependent upon in-depth planning and preparation, which is often included within an organization's business continuity plan (BCP). Planning and recovery preparation should include the following core competencies:

• A well-defined understanding of crown jewels data and supporting applications that align to backup, failover, and restoration tasks that prioritize mission-critical business operations

• Clearly defined asset prioritization and recovery sequencing

• Thoroughly documented recovery processes for critical systems and data

• Trained personnel to support recovery efforts

• Validation of recovery processes to ensure successful execution

• Clear delineation of responsibility for managing and verifying data and application backups

• Online and offline data backup retention policies, including initiation, frequency, verification, and testing (for both on-premises and cloud-based data)

• Established service-level agreements (SLAs) with vendors to prioritize application and infrastructure-focused support

Continuity and recovery planning can become stale over time, and processes are often not updated to reflect environment and personnel changes. Prioritizing evaluations, continuous training, and recovery validation exercises will enable an organization to be better prepared in the event of a disaster.

Detection Opportunities for Backups

IT and OT Segmentation

Organizations should ensure that there is both physical and logical segmentation between corporate information technology (IT) domains, identities, networks, and assets and those used in direct support of operational technology (OT) processes and control. By enforcing IT and OT segmentation, organizations can inhibit a threat actor's ability to pivot from corporate environments to mission-critical OT assets using compromised accounts and existing network access paths. 

OT environments should leverage separate identity stores (e.g., dedicated Active Directory domains), which are not trusted or cross-used in support of corporate identity and authentication. The compromise of a corporate identity or asset should not result in a threat actor's ability to directly pivot to accessing an asset that has the ability to influence an OT process.

In addition to separate AD forests being leveraged for IT and OT, segmentation should also include technologies that may have a dual use in the IT and OT environments (backup servers, antivirus [AV], endpoint detection and response [EDR], jump servers, storage, virtual network infrastructure). OT segmentation should be designed such that if there is a disruption in the corporate (IT) environment, the OT process can safely function independently, without a direct dependency (account, asset, network pathway) with the corporate infrastructure. For any dependencies that cannot be readily segmented, organizations should identify potential short-term processes or manual controls to ensure that the OT environment can be effectively isolated if evidence of an IT (corporate)-focused incident were detected. 

Segmenting IT and OT environments is a best practice recommended by industry standards such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SP 800-82r3: Guide to Operational Technology (OT) Security and IEC 62443 (formerly ISA99).

According to these best-practice standards, segmenting IT and OT networks should include the following:

• OT attack surface reduction by restricting the scope of ports, services, and protocols that are directly accessible within the OT network from the corporate (IT) network.

• Incoming access from corporate (IT) into OT must terminate within a segmented OT demilitarized zone (DMZ). The OT DMZ must require that a separate level of authentication and access be granted (outside of leveraging an account or endpoint that resides within the corporate IT domain). 

• Explicit firewall rules should restrict both incoming traffic from the corporate environment and outgoing traffic from the OT environment.

• Firewalls should be configured using the principle of deny by default, with only approved and authorized traffic flows permitted. Egress (internet) traffic flows for all assets that support OT should also follow the deny-by-default model.

• Identity (account) segmentation must be enforced between corporate IT and OT. An account or endpoint within either environment should not have any permissions or access rights assigned outside of the respective environment. 

• Remote access to the OT environment should not leverage similar accounts that have remote access permissions assigned within the corporate IT environment. MFA using separate credentials should be enforced for remotely accessing OT assets and resources.

• Training and verification of manual control processes, including isolation and reliability verification for safety systems.

• Secured enclaves for storing backups, programming logic, and logistical diagrams for systems and devices that comprise the OT infrastructure.

• The default usernames and passwords associated with OT devices should always be changed from the default vendor configuration(s). 

Detection Opportunities for IT and OT Segmented Environments

Egress Restrictions

Servers and assets that are infrequently rebooted are highly targeted by threat actors for establishing backdoors to create persistent beacons to command-and-control (C2) infrastructure. By blocking or severely limiting internet access for these types of assets, an organization can effectively reduce the risk of a threat actor compromising servers, extracting data, or installing backdoors that leverage egress communications for maintaining access.

Egress restrictions should be enforced so that servers, internal network devices, critical IT assets, OT assets, and field devices cannot attempt to communicate to external sites and addresses (internet resources). The concept of deny by default should apply to all servers, network devices, and critical assets (including both IT and OT), with only allow-listed and authorized egress traffic flows explicitly defined and enforced. Where possible, this should include blocking recursive Domain Name System (DNS) resolutions not included in an allow-list to prevent communication via DNS tunneling.

If possible, egress traffic should be routed through an inspection layer (such as a proxy) to monitor external connections and block any connections to malicious domains or IP addresses. Connections to uncategorized network locations (e.g., a domain that has been recently registered) should not be permitted. Ideally, DNS requests would be routed through an external service (e.g., Cisco Umbrella, Infoblox DDI) to monitor for lookups to malicious domains. 

Threat actors often attempt to harvest credentials (including New Technology Local Area Network [LAN] Manager [NTLM] hashes) based upon outbound Server Message Block (SMB) or Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) communications. Organizations should review and limit the scope of egress protocols that are permissible from any endpoint within the environment. While Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) (Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/80) and HTTP Secure (HTTPS) (TCP/443) egress communications are likely required for many user-based endpoints, the scope of external sites and addresses can potentially be limited based upon web traffic-filtering technologies. Ideally, organizations should only permit egress protocols and communications based upon a predefined allow-list. Common high-risk ports for egress restrictions include:

• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

• Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)

• Secure Shell (SSH)

• Server Message Block (SMB)

• Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) 

• WebDAV

Detection Opportunities for Suspicious Egress Traffic Flows

Virtualization Infrastructure Protections 

Threat actors often target virtualization infrastructure (e.g., VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V) as part of their reconnaissance, lateral movement, data theft, and potential ransomware deployment objectives. Securing virtualization infrastructure requires a Zero Trust network posture as a primary defense. Because management appliances often lack native MFA for local privileged accounts, identity-based security alone can be a high-risk single point of failure. If credentials are compromised, the logical network architecture becomes the final line of defense protecting the virtualization management plane.

To reduce the attack surface of virtualized infrastructure, a best practice for VMware vSphere vCenter ESXi and Hyper-V appliances and servers is to isolate and restrict access to the management interfaces, essentially enclaving these interfaces within isolated virtual local area networks (VLANs) (network segments) where connectivity is only permissible from dedicated subnets where administrative actions can be initiated.

To protect the virtualization control plane, organizations must consider a "defense-in-depth" network model. This architecture integrates physical isolation and east-west micro-segmentation to remove all access paths from untrusted networks. The result is a management zone that remains isolated and resilient, even during an active intrusion.

VMware vSphere Zero-Trust Network Architecture 

The primary goal is to ensure that even if privileged credentials are compromised, the logical network remains the definitive defensive layer preventing access to virtualization management interfaces.

• Immutable VLAN Segmentation: Enforce strict isolation using distinct 802.1Q VLAN IDs for host management, Infrastructure/VCSA, vMotion (non-routable), Storage (non-routable), and production Guest VMs.

• Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF): Transition all infrastructure VLANs into a dedicated VRF instance. This ensures that even a total compromise of the "User" or "Guest" zones results in no available route to the management zone(s).

Layer 3 and 4 Access Policies

The management network must be accessible only from trusted, hardened sources.

• PAW-Exclusive Access: Deconstruct all direct routes from the general corporate LAN to management subnets. Access must originate strictly from a designated Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) subnet.

• Ingress Filtering (Management Zone):

  • ALLOW: TCP/443 (UI/API) and TCP/902 (MKS) from the PAW subnet only.

  • DENY: Explicitly block SSH (TCP/22) and VAMI (TCP/5480) from all sources except the PAW subnet.

• Restrictive Egress Policy: Enforce outbound filtering at the hardware gateway (as the VCSA GUI cannot manage egress). To prevent persistence using C2 traffic and data exfiltration, block all internet access except to specific, verified update servers (e.g., VMware Update Manager) and authorized identity providers.

Host-Based Firewall Enforcement

Complement network firewalls with host-level filtering to eliminate visibility gaps within the same VLAN.

• VCSA (Photon OS): Transition the default policy to "Default Deny" via the VAMI or, preferably, at the OS level using iptables/nftables for granular source/destination mapping. 

• ESXi Hypervisors: Restrict all services (SSH, Web Access, NFC/Storage) to specific management IPs by deselecting "Allow connections from any IP address."

Additional information related to VMware vSphere VCSA host based firewalls.

A listing of administrative ports associated with VMWare vCenter (that should be targeted for isolation).

Hyper-V Zero-Trust Network Architecture 

Similar to vSphere, Hyper-V requires strict isolation of its various traffic types to prevent lateral movement from guest workloads to the management plane.

• VLAN Segmentation: Organizations must enforce isolation using distinct VLANs for Host Management, Live Migration, Cluster Heartbeat (CSV), and Production Guest VMs.

• Non-Routable Networks: Traffic for Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) should be placed on non-routable VLANs to ensure these high-bandwidth, sensitive streams cannot be intercepted from other segments.

Layer 3 and 4 Access Policies

The management network must be accessible only from trusted, hardened sources.

• PAW-Exclusive Access: Deconstruct all direct routes from the general corporate LAN to management subnets. Access must originate strictly from a designated Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) subnet.

• Ingress Filtering (Management Zone):

• ALLOW: WinRM / PowerShell Remoting (TCP/5985 and TCP/5986), RDP (TCP/3389), and WMI/RPC (TCP/135 and dynamic RPC ports)strictly from the PAW subnet. If using Windows Admin Center, allow HTTPS (TCP/443) to the gateway.

• DENY: Explicitly block SMB (TCP/445), RPC/WMI (TCP/135), and all other management traffic from untrusted sources to prevent credential theft and lateral movement.

• Restrictive Egress Policy: Enforce outbound filtering at the network gateway. To prevent persistence using C2 traffic and data exfiltration, block all internet access from Hyper-V hosts except to specific, verified update servers (e.g., internal WSUS), authorized Active Directory Domain Controllers, and Key Management Servers (KMS).

Host-Based Firewall Enforcement

Use the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (WFAS) to achieve a defense-in-depth posture at the host level.

• Scope Restriction: For all enabled management rules (e.g., File and Printer Sharing, WMI, PowerShell Remoting), modify the Remote IP Address scope to "These IP addresses" and enter only the PAW and management server subnets.

• Management Logging: Enable logging for Dropped Packets in the Windows Firewall profile. This allows the SIEM to ingest "denied" connection attempts, which serve as high-fidelity indicators of internal reconnaissance or unauthorized access attempts.

Additional information related to Hyper-V host based firewalls.

Additional information related to securing Hyper-V. 

General Virtualization Hardening 

To protect management interfaces for VMware vSphere the VMKernel network interface card (NIC) should not be bound to the same virtual network assigned to virtual machines running on the host. Additionally, ESXi servers can be configured in lockdown mode, which will only allow console access from the vCenter server(s). Additional information related to lockdown mode.

The SSH protocol (TCP/22) provides a common channel for accessing a physical virtualization server or appliance (vCenter) for administration and troubleshooting. Threat actors commonly leverage SSH for direct access to virtualization infrastructure to conduct destructive attacks. In addition to enclaving access to administrative interfaces, SSH access to virtualization infrastructure should be disabled and only enabled for specific use-cases. If SSH is required, network ACLs should be used to limit where connections can originate.

Identity segmentation should also be configured when accessing administrative interfaces associated with virtualization infrastructure. If Active Directory authentication provides direct integrated access to the physical virtualization stack, a threat actor that has compromised a valid Active Directory account (with permissions to manage the virtualization infrastructure) could potentially use the account to directly access virtualized systems to steal data or perform destructive actions.

Authentication to virtualized infrastructure should rely upon dedicated and unique accounts that are configured with strong passwords and that are not co-used for additional access within an environment. Additionally, accessing management interfaces associated with virtualization infrastructure should only be initiated from isolated privileged access workstations, which prevent the storing and caching of passwords used for accessing critical infrastructure components.

Protecting Hypervisors Against Offline Credential Theft and Exfiltration

Organizations should implement a proactive, defense-in-depth technical hardening strategy to systematically address security gaps and mitigate the risk of offline credential theft from the hypervisor layer. The core of this attack is an offline credential theft technique known as a "Disk Swap." Once an adversary has administrative control over the hypervisor (vSphere or Hyper-V), they perform the following steps:

• Target Identification: The actor identifies a critical virtualized asset, such as a Domain Controller (DC) 

• Offline Manipulation: The target VM is powered off, and its virtual disk file (e.g., .vmdk for VMware or .vhd/.vhdx for Hyper-V) is detached.

• NTDS.dit Extraction: The disk is attached to a staging or "orphaned" VM under the attacker's control. From this unmonitored machine, they copy the NTDS.dit Active Directory database.

• Stealthy Recovery: The disk is re-attached to the original DC, and the VM is powered back on, leaving minimal forensic evidence within the guest operating system.

Hardening and Mitigation Guidance

To defend against this logic, organizations must implement a defense-in-depth strategy that focuses on cryptographic isolation and strict lifecycle management.

• Virtual Machine Encryption: Organizations must encrypt all Tier 0 virtualized assets (e.g., Domain Controllers, PKI, and Backup Servers). Encryption ensures that even if a virtual disk file is stolen or detached, it remains unreadable without access to the specific keys. 

• Strict Decommissioning Processes: Do not leave powered-off or "orphaned" virtual machines on datastores. These "ghost" VMs are ideal staging environments for attackers. Formally decommission assets by deleting their virtual disks rather than just removing them from the inventory.

• Harden Hypervisor Accounts: Disable or restrict default administrative accounts (such as root on ESXi or the local Administrator on Hyper-V hosts). Enforce Lockdown Mode (VMware ESXi feature) where possible to prevent direct host-level changes outside of the central management plane.

• Remote Audit Logging: Enable and forward all hypervisor-level audit logs (e.g., hostd.log, vpxa.log, or Windows Event Logs for Hyper-V) to a centralized SIEM. 

Protecting Backups

Security measures must encompass both production and backup environments. An attack on the production plane is often coupled with a simultaneous focus on backup integrity, creating a total loss of operational continuity. Virtual disk files (VMDK for VMware and VHD/VHDX for Hyper-V) represent a high-value target for offline data theft and direct manipulation.

Hardening and Mitigation Guidance

To mitigate the risk of offline theft and backup manipulation, organizations must implement a "Default Encrypted" policy across the entire lifecycle of the virtual disk .

• At-Rest Encryption for all Tier-0 Assets: Implement vSphere VM Encryption or Hyper-V Shielded VMs for all critical infrastructure (e.g., Domain Controllers, Certificate Authorities). This ensures that the raw VMDK or VHDX files are cryptographically protected, rendering them unreadable if detached or mounted by an unauthorized party.

• Encrypted Backup Repositories: Ensure that the backup application is configured to encrypt backup data at rest using a unique key stored in a separate, hardened Key Management System (KMS). This prevents "direct manipulation" of the backup files even if the backup storage itself is compromised. 

• Network Isolation of Storage & Backups: Isolate the storage management network and the backup infrastructure into dedicated, non-routable VLANs. Access to the backup console and repositories must require phishing-resistant MFA and originate from a designated Privileged Access Workstation (PAW).

• Immutability and Air-Gapping: Use Immutable Backup Repositories to ensure that once a backup is written, it cannot be modified or deleted by any user including a compromised administrator for a set period. This provides a definitive recovery point in the event of a ransomware attack or intentional data sabotage.

Detection Opportunities for Monitoring Virtualization Infrastructure

Protecting Against DDoS Attacks

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an example of a disruptive attack that could impact the availability of cloud-based resources and services. Modernized DDoS protection must extend beyond the legacy concepts of filtering and rate-limiting, and include cloud-native capabilities that can scale to combat adversarial capabilities.

In addition to third-party DDoS and web application access protection services, the following table provides an overview of DDoS protection capabilities within common cloud-based infrastructures.

Hardening the Cloud Perimeter 

With the hybrid operating model of modern day infrastructure, cloud consoles and SaaS platforms are high-value targets for credential harvesting and data exfiltration. Minimizing these risks requires a dual-defense strategy: robust identity controls to prevent unauthorized access, and platform-specific guardrails to protect access to resources, data, and to minimize the attack surface. 

Strong Authentication Enforcement

Strong authentication is the foundational requirement for cloud resilience and securing cloud infrastructure. Similar to on-premises environments, a compromise of a privileged credential, token, or session could lead to unintended consequences that result in a high-impact event for an organization. To mitigate these pervasive risks, organizations must unconditionally enforce strong authentication for all external-facing cloud services, administrative portals, and SaaS platforms. 

Organizations should enforce the usage of phishing-resistant authenticators such as FIDO2 (WebAuthn) hardware tokens or passkeys, or certificate based authentication for accounts assigned privileged roles and functions. For non-privileged users, authenticator software (Microsoft Authenticator or Okta Verify) should be configured to utilize device-bound factors such as Windows Hello for Business or TouchID.

Additionally, organizations should leverage the concept of authenticators (identity + device attestation) as part of the authentication transaction. This includes enforcing a validated-device access policy that restricts privileged access to only originate from managed, compliant, and healthy devices. Trusted network zones should be defined in order to restrict access to cloud resources from the open internet. Untrusted network zones should be defined to restrict authentication from anonymizing services such as VPNs or TOR. Using device-bound session credentials where possible mitigates the risk of session token theft.

Identity and Device Segmentation for Privileged Actions

The implementation of privileged access workstations (PAWs) is a critical defense against threat actors attempting to compromise administrative sessions. A PAW is a highly hardened, dedicated hardware endpoint used exclusively for sensitive administrative tasks.

Administrators should leverage a non-privileged account for daily tasks, while privileged actions are restricted to only being permissible from the hardened PAW, or from explicitly defined IP ranges. This "air-gap" between communication and administration prevents an adversary from moving laterally from a compromised non-privileged identity to a privileged context within hybrid environments. 

Just-in-Time Access and the Principle of Least Privilege

Static, standing privileges present a security risk in hybrid environments. Following a zero-trust cloud architecture, administrative privileges should be entirely ephemeral. Implementing Just-In-Time (JIT) and Just-Enough-Access (JEA) mechanisms ensures that administrators are granted only the specific, granular permissions necessary to perform a discrete task, and only for a highly limited duration, after which the permissions are automatically revoked. This architectural model provides organizations with the ability to enforce approvals for privileged actions, enhanced monitoring, and detailed visibility regarding any privileged actions taken within a specific session.

Securing Non-Human Identities

Organizations should implement identity governance practices that include processes to rotate API keys, certificates, service account secrets, tokens, and sessions on a predefined basis. AI agents or identities correlating to autonomous outcomes should be configured with strictly scoped permissions and associated monitoring. Non-privileged users should be restricted from authorizing third-party application integrations or creating API keys without organizational approval.

Continuous scanning should be performed to identify and remediate hard-coded secrets and sensitive credentials across all cloud and SaaS environments.

Storage Infrastructure Security and Immutable Backups

The strategic objective of a destructive cyberattack—whether for extortion or sabotage—is to prolong recovery and reconstitution efforts by ensuring data is irrecoverable. Modern adversaries systematically target the backup plane as part of a destructive event. If backups remain mutable or share an identity plane with the primary environment, attackers can delete or encrypt them, transforming an incident into a prolonged and chaotic recovery exercise.

While modern-day redundancy for backups should include multiple data copies across diverse media, geographic separation can be a subverted defensive strategy if logical access is unified. To ensure resilience against destructive attacks, the secondary recovery environment should reside within a sovereign cloud tenant or isolated subscription. This environment should be governed by an independent Identity and Access Management (IAM) plane, using distinct credentials and administrative personas that share no commonality with the production environment.

Backups within an isolated environment must be anchored by immutable storage architectures. By leveraging hardware-verified Write-Once, Read-Many (WORM) technology, the recovery plane ensures that data integrity is mathematically guaranteed. Once committed, data cannot be modified, encrypted, or deleted—even by accounts with root or global administrative privileges, until the retention period expires. This creates a definitive "fail-safe" that ensures a known-good recovery point remains accessible regardless of potential security risks in the primary environment.

Additional defense-in-depth security architecture controls relevant to common cloud-based infrastructures are included in Table 9.

Detection Opportunities for Protecting Cloud Infrastructure and Resources

3. On-Premises Lateral Movement Protections

Endpoint Hardening

Windows Firewall Configurations

Once initial access to on-premises infrastructure is established, threat actors will conduct lateral movement to attempt to further expand the scope of access and persistence. To protect Windows endpoints from being accessed using common lateral movement techniques, a Windows Firewall policy can be configured to restrict the scope of communications permitted between endpoints within an environment. A Windows Firewall policy can be enforced locally or centrally as part of a Group Policy Object (GPO) configuration. At a minimum, the common ports and protocols leveraged for lateral movement that should be blocked between workstation-to-workstation and workstations to non-domain controllers and non-file servers include:

• SMB (TCP/445, TCP/135, TCP/139)

• Remote Desktop Protocol (TCP/3389)

• Windows Remote Management (WinRM)/Remote PowerShell (TCP/80, TCP/5985, TCP/5986)

• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) (dynamic port range assigned through Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM))

Using a GPO (Figure 5), the settings listed in Table 11 can be configured for the Windows Firewall to control inbound communications to endpoints in a managed environment. The referenced settings will effectively block all inbound connections for the Private and Public profiles, and for the Domain profile, only allow connections that do not match a predefined block rule.

Figure 5: GPO path for creating Windows Firewall rules

Additionally, to ensure that only centrally managed firewall rules are enforced (and cannot be overridden by a threat actor), the settings for Apply local firewall rules and Apply local connection security rules can be set to No for all profiles.

To quickly contain and isolate systems, the centralized Windows Firewall setting of Block all connections (Figure 8) will prevent any inbound connections from being established to a system. This is a setting that can be enforced on workstations and laptops, but will likely impact operations if enforced for servers, although if there is evidence of an active threat actor lateral pivoting within an environment, it may be a necessary step for rapid containment.

Note: If this control is being used temporarily to facilitate containment as part of an active incident, once the incident has been contained and it has been deemed safe to re-establish connectivity among systems within an environment, the Inbound Connections setting can be changed back to Allow using a GPO.

If blocking all inbound connectivity for endpoints during a containment event is not practical, or for the Domain profile configurations, at a minimum, the protocols listed in Table 12 should be enforced using either a GPO or via the commands referenced within the table.

NTLM Authentication Configurations

Threat actors often attempt to harvest credentials (including Windows NTLMv1 hashes) based upon outbound SMB or WebDAV communications. Organizations should review NTLM settings for Windows-based endpoints, and work to harden, disable, or restrict NTLMv1 authentication requests. 

To fully restrict NTLM authentication to remote servers, the following GPO settings can be leveraged:

• Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > Network Security: Restrict NTLM: Outgoing NTLM traffic to remote servers 

  • Allow all

  • Audit all

  • Deny all

Note: If "Deny all" is selected, the client computer cannot authenticate (send credentials) to a remote server using NTLM authentication. Before setting to "Deny all," organizations should configure the GPO setting with the "Audit all" enforcement. With this configuration, audit and block events will be recorded within the Operational event log on endpoints (Applications and Services Log\Microsoft\Windows\NTLM).

If any recorded NTLM authentication events are required, organizations can configure the "Network security: Restrict NTLM: Add remote server exceptions for NTLM authentication" setting to define a listing of remote servers, which are required to use NTLM authentication.

Detection Opportunities for SMB, WMI, and NTLM Communications

Remote Desktop Protocol Hardening

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a common method used by threat actors to remotely connect to systems, laterally move from the perimeter onto a larger scope of internal systems, and perform malicious activities (such as data theft or ransomware deployment). External-facing systems with RDP open to the internet present an elevated risk. Threat actors may exploit this vector to gain initial access to an organization and then perform lateral movement into the organization to complete their mission objectives.

Proactively, organizations should scan their public IP address ranges to identify systems with RDP (TCP/3389) and other protocols (SMB – TCP/445) open to the internet. At a minimum, RDP and SMB should not be directly exposed for ingress and egress access to/from the internet. If required for operational purposes, explicit controls should be implemented to restrict the source IP addresses, which can interface with systems using these protocols. The following hardening recommendations should also be implemented.

Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication

If external-facing RDP must be used for operational purposes, MFA should be enforced when connecting using this method. This can be accomplished either via the integration of a third-party MFA technology or by leveraging a Remote Desktop Gateway and Azure Multifactor Authentication Server using Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS).

Leverage Network-Level Authentication

For external-facing RDP servers, Network-Level Authentication (NLA) provides an extra layer of preauthentication before a connection is established. NLA can also be useful for protecting against brute-force attacks, which often target open internet-facing RDP servers.

NLA can be configured either via the user interface (UI) (Figure 10) or via Group Policy (Figure 11).

Using a GPO, the setting for NLA can be configured via:

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Security > Require user authentication for remote connections by using Network Level Authentication

  • Enabled

Some caveats about leveraging NLA for RDP:

• The Remote Desktop client v7.0 (or greater) must be leveraged.

• NLA uses CredSSP to pass authentication requests on the initiating system. CredSSP stores credentials in Local Security Authority (LSA) memory on the initiating system, and these credentials may remain in memory even after a user logs off the system. This provides a potential exposure risk for credentials in memory on the source system.

• On the RDP server, users permitted for remote access using RDP must be assigned the Access this computer from the network privilege when NLA is enforced. This privilege is often explicitly denied for user accounts to protect against lateral movement techniques.

Restrict Administrative Accounts from Leveraging RDP on Internet-Facing Systems

For external-facing RDP servers, highly privileged domain and local administrative accounts should not be permitted access to authenticate with the external-facing systems using RDP (Figure 12). 

This can be enforced using Group Policy, configurable via the following path: 

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment > Deny log on through Terminal Services

Detection Opportunities for RDP Usage

Disabling Administrative/Hidden Shares

To conduct lateral movement, threat actors may attempt to identify administrative or hidden network shares, including those that are not explicitly mapped to a drive letter and use these for remotely binding to endpoints throughout an environment. As a protective or rapid containment measure, organizations may need to quickly disable default administrative or hidden shares from being accessible on endpoints. This can be accomplished by either modifying the registry, stopping a service, or by using the MSS (Legacy) Group Policy template.

Common administrative and hidden shares on endpoints include:

• ADMIN$
• C$
• D$
• IPC$

Registry Method

Using the registry, administrative and hidden shares can be disabled on endpoints (Figure 13 and Figure 14).

Workstations

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
DWORD Name = "AutoShareWks"
Value = "0"

Figure 13: Registry value disabling administrative shares on workstations

Servers

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
DWORD Name = "AutoShareServer"
Value = "0"

Figure 14: Registry value disabling administrative shares on servers

Service Method

By stopping the Server service on an endpoint, the ability to access any shares hosted on the endpoint will be disabled (Figure 15).

Group Policy Method

Using the MSS (Legacy) Group Policy template, administrative and hidden shares can be disabled on either a server or workstation via a GPO setting (Figure 16).

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > MSS (Legacy) > MSS (AutoShareServer)

  • Disabled

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > MSS (Legacy) > MSS (AutoShareWks)

  • Disabled

Detection Opportunities for Accessing Administrative or Hidden Shares

Hardening Windows Remote Management

Threat actors may leverage Windows Remote Management (WinRM) to laterally move throughout an environment. WinRM is enabled by default on all Windows Server operating systems (since Windows Server 2012 and above), but disabled on all client operating systems (Windows 7 and Windows 10) and older server platforms (Windows Server 2008 R2).

PowerShell remoting (PS remoting) is a native Windows remote command execution feature that is built on top of the WinRM protocol.

Windows client (nonserver) operating system platforms where WinRM is disabled indicates that there is:

• No WinRM listener configured

• No Windows firewall exception configured

By default, WinRM uses TCP/5985 and TCP/5986, which can be either disabled using the Windows Firewall or configured so that a specific subset of IP addresses can be authorized for connecting to endpoints using WinRM.

WinRM and PowerShell remoting can be explicitly disabled on endpoint using either a PowerShell command (Figure 17) or specific GPO settings.

PowerShell

Disable-PSRemoting -Force

Figure 17: PowerShell command to disable WinRM/PowerShell remoting on an endpoint

Note: Running Disable-PSRemoting -Force does not prevent local users from creating PowerShell sessions on the local computer or for sessions destined for remote computers.

After running the command, the message recorded in Figure 18 will be displayed. These steps provide additional hardening, but after running the Disable-PSRemoting -Force command, PowerShell sessions destined for the target endpoint will not be successful.

To enforce the additional steps for disabling WinRM via PowerShell (Figure 19 through Figure 22):

1. Stop and disable the WinRM service.
   
   

   Stop-Service WinRM -PassThruSet-Service WinRM -StartupType Disabled

   Figure 19: PowerShell command to stop and disable the WinRM service

   
   
2. Disable the listener that accepts requests on any IP address.
   
   

   dir wsman:\localhost\listener
   
   Remove-Item -Path WSMan:\Localhost\listener\<Listener name>

   Figure 20: PowerShell commands to delete a WSMan listener

   
   
3. Disable the firewall exceptions for WS-Management communications.
   
   

   Set-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName 'Windows Remote Management (HTTP-In)' -Enabled False 

   Figure 21: PowerShell command to disable firewall exceptions for WinRM

   
   
4. Restore the value of the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy to 0, which restricts remote access to members of the Administrators group on the computer.
   
   

   Set-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system -Name LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy -Value 0

   Figure 22: PowerShell command to configure the registry key for LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy

Group Policy

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Remote Management (WinRM) > WinRM Service > Allow remote server management through WinRM

  • Disabled

If this setting is configured as Disabled, the WinRM service will not respond to requests from a remote computer, regardless of whether any WinRM listeners are configured.

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Remote Shell > Allow Remote Shell Access 

  • Disabled

This policy setting will manage the configuration of remote access to all supported shells to execute scripts and commands.

Detection Opportunities for WinRM Usage

Restricting Common Lateral Movement Tools and Methods

Table 17 provides a consolidated summary of security configurations that can be leveraged to combat against common remote access tools and methods used for lateral movement within environments.

Detection Opportunities for Common Lateral Movement Tools and Methods

Additional Endpoint Hardening

To help protect against malicious binaries, malware, and encryptors being invoked on endpoints, additional security hardening technologies and controls should be considered. Examples of additional security controls for consideration for Windows-based endpoints are provided as follows.

Windows Defender Application Control

Windows Defender Application Control is a set of inherent configuration settings within Active Directory that provide lockdown and control mechanisms for controlling which applications and files users can run on endpoints. With this functionality, the following types of rules can be configured within GPOs:

• Publisher rules: Can be leveraged to allow or restrict execution of files based upon digital signatures and other attributes

• Path rules: Can be leveraged to allow or restrict file execution or access based upon files residing in specific path

• File hash rules: Can be leveraged to allow or restrict file execution based on a file's hash

Additional information related to Windows Defender Application Control.

Microsoft Defender Attack Surface Reduction

Microsoft Defender Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules can help protect against various threats, including:

• A threat actor launching executable files and scripts that attempt to download or run files

• A threat actor running obfuscated or suspicious scripts

• A threat actor invoking credential theft tools that interface with Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS)

• A threat actor invoking PsExec or WMI commands

• Normalizing and blocking behaviors that applications do not usually initiate as part of standardized activity

• Blocking executable content from email clients and web mail (phishing)

ASR requires a Windows E3 license or above. A Windows E5 license provides advanced management capabilities for ASR.

Additional information related to Microsoft Defender Attack Surface Reduction functionality.

Controlled Folder Access

Controlled folder access can help protect data from being encrypted by ransomware. Beginning with Windows 10 version 1709+ and Windows Server 2019+, controlled folder access was introduced within Windows Defender Antivirus (as part of Windows Defender Exploit Guard). 

Once controlled folder access is enabled, applications and executable files are assessed by Windows Defender Antivirus, which then determines if an application is malicious or safe. If an application is determined to be malicious or suspicious, it will be blocked from making changes to any files in a protected folder.

Once enabled, controlled folder access will apply to a number of system folders and default locations, including:

• Documents
  • C:\users\<username>\Documents
  • C:\users\Public\Documents
• Pictures
  • C:\users\<username>\Pictures
  • C:\users\Public\Pictures
• Videos
  • C:\users\<username>\Videos
  • C:\users\Public\Videos
• Music
  • C:\users\<username>\Music
  • C:\users\Public\Music
• Desktop
  • C:\users\<username>\Desktop
  • C:\users\Public\Desktop
• Favorites
  • C:\users\<username>\Favorites

Additional folders can be added using the Windows Security application, Group Policy, PowerShell, or mobile device management (MDM) configuration service providers (CSPs). Additionally, applications can be allow-listed for access to protected folders.

Note: For controlled folder access to fully function, Windows Defender's Real Time Protection setting must be enabled.

Additional information related to controlled folder access.

Tamper Protection

Threat actors will often attempt to disable security features on endpoints. Tamper protection either in Windows (via Microsoft Defender for Endpoint) or integrated within third-party AV/EDR platforms can help protect security tools from being modified or stopped by a threat actor. Organizations should review the configuration of security technologies that are deployed to endpoints and verify if tamper protection is (or can be) enabled to protect against unauthorized modification. Once implemented, organizations should test and validate that the tamper protection controls behave as expected as different products offer different levels of protection.

Additional information related to tamper protection for Windows Defender for Endpoint.

Detection Opportunities for Tamper Protection Events

4. Credential Exposure and Account Protections

Identification of Privileged Accounts and Groups

Threat actors will prioritize identifying privileged accounts as part of reconnaissance efforts. Once identified, threat actors will attempt to obtain credentials for these accounts for lateral movement, persistence, and mission fulfillment.

Organizations should proactively focus on identifying and reviewing the scope of accounts and groups within Active Directory that have an elevated level of privilege. An elevated level of privilege can be determined by the following criteria:

• Accounts or nested groups that are assigned membership into default domain and Exchange-based privileged groups (Figure 29)

• Accounts or nested groups that are assigned membership into security groups protected by AdminSDHolder

• Accounts or groups assigned permissions for organizational units (OUs) housing privileged accounts, groups, or endpoints

• Accounts or groups assigned specific extended right permissions either directly at the root of the domain or for OUs where permissions are inherited by child objects. Examples include:

  • DS-Replication-Get-Changes-All
  • Administer Exchange Information Store
  • View Exchange Information Store Status
  • Create-Inbound-Forest-Trust
  • Migrate-SID-History
  • Reanimate-Tombstones
  • View Exchange Information Store Status
  • User-Force-Change-Password

• Accounts or groups assigned permissions for modifying or linking GPOs

• Accounts or groups assigned explicit permissions on domain controllers or Tier 0 endpoints

• Accounts or groups assigned directory service replication permissions

• Accounts or groups with local administrative access on all endpoints (or a large scope of critical assets) in a domain

To identify accounts that are provided membership into default domain-based privileged groups or are protected by AdminSDHolder, the following PowerShell cmdlets can be run from a domain controller.

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Domain Admins" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\DomainAdmins.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Enterprise Admins" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\EnterpriseAdmins.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Schema Admins" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\SchemaAdmins.csv -NoTypeInformation

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Administrators" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\Administrators.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Account Operators" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\AccountOperators.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Backup Operators" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\BackupOperators.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Cert Publishers" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\CertPublishers.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Print Operators" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\PrintOperators.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Server Operators" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\ServerOperators.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "DNSAdmins" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\DNSAdmins.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Group Policy Creator Owners" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\Group-Policy-Creator-Owners.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Exchange Trusted Subsystem" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\Exchange-Trusted-Subsystem.csv -NoTypeInformation

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Exchange Windows Permissions" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\Exchange-Windows-Permissions.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Exchange Recipient Administrators" -Recursive | export-csv -path <output directory>\Exchange-Recipient-Admins.csv -NoTypeInformation 

get-ADUser -Filter {(AdminCount -eq 1) -And (Enabled -eq $True)} | Select-Object Name, DistinguishedName | export-csv -path <output directory>\AdminSDHolder_Enabled.csv

Figure 29: Commands to identify domain and exchange-based privileged accounts

Any privileged accounts granted membership into additional security groups can provide a threat actor with a potential path to domain administration-level permissions based upon endpoints where the accounts have permissions to log on or remotely access systems.

Ideally, only a small scope of accounts should be provided with highly privileged access within a domain. Accounts with highly privileged permissions should not be leveraged for daily use; used for interactive or remote logons to workstations, laptops, or common servers; or used for performing functions on non-domain controller (Tier 0) assets.For additional recommendations for restricting access for privileged accounts, reference the Privileged Account Logon Restrictions section of this blog post.

Detection Opportunities for Privileged Accounts, Groups, and GPO Modifications

Privileged and Service Account Protections

Identify and Review Noncomputer Accounts Configured with an SPN

Accounts with service principal names (SPNs) are commonly targeted by threat actors for privilege escalation. Using Kerberos, any domain user can request a Kerberos service ticket (TGS) from a domain controller for any account configured with an SPN. Noncomputer accounts likely are configured with guessable (nonrandom) passwords. Regardless of the domain function level or the host's Windows version, SPNs that are registered under a noncomputer account will use the legacy RC4-HMAC encryption suite rather than Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The key used for encryption and decryption of the RC4-HMAC encryption type represents an unsalted NTLM hash version of the account's password, which could be derived via cracking the ticket.

Organizations should review Active Directory to identify noncomputer accounts configured with an SPN. Noncomputer accounts correlated to registered SPNs are likely service accounts and provide a method for a threat actor (without administrative privileges) to potentially derive (crack) the plain-text password for the account (Kerberoasting). To identify noncomputer accounts configured with an SPN, the PowerShell cmdlet referenced in Figure 31 can be run from a domain controller.

Get-ADUser -Filter {(ServicePrincipalName -like "*")} | Select-Object name,samaccountname,sid,enabled,DistinguishedName

Figure 31: PowerShell cmdlet to identify noncomputer accounts configured with an SPN

Where possible, organizations should deregister noncomputer accounts with SPNs configured. Where SPNs are needed, organizations should mitigate the risk associated with Kerberoasting attacks. Accounts with SPNs should be configured with strong, unique passwords (e.g., minimum 25+ characters) with the passwords rotated on a periodic basis for the accounts. Furthermore, privileges should be reviewed and reduced for these accounts to ensure that each account has the minimum required privileges needed for the intended function.

Accounts with SPNs should be considered in-scope for the proactive hardening measures detailed throughout this blog post.

Note: SPNs should never be associated with regular interactive user accounts.

Detection Opportunities for Noncomputer Accounts Configured with an SPN

Privileged Account Logon Restrictions

Privileged and service account credentials are commonly used for lateral movement and establishing persistence.

For any accounts that have privileged access throughout an environment, the accounts should not be used on standard workstations and laptops, but rather from designated systems (e.g., privileged access workstations [PAWs]) that reside in restricted and protected VLANs and tiers. Dedicated privileged accounts should be defined for each tier, with controls that enforce that the accounts can only be used within the designated tier. Guardrail enforcement for privileged accounts can be defined within GPOs or by using authentication policy silos (Windows Server 2012 R2 domain-functional level or above).

The recommendations for restricting the scope of access for privileged accounts are based upon Microsoft's guidance for securing privileged access. For additional information, reference:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security/compass/privileged-access-access-model

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/security/credentials-protection-and-management/authentication-policies-and-authentication-policy-silos

User Rights Assignments

As a proactive hardening or quick containment measure, consider blocking any accounts with privileged AD access from being able to log in (remotely or locally) to standard workstations, laptops, and common access servers (e.g., virtualized desktop infrastructure).

The settings referenced as follows are configurable using user rights assignments defined within GPOs via the path of: 

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment

Accounts delegated with domain-based privileged access should be explicitly denied access to standard workstations and laptop systems within the context of the following settings (which can be configured using GPO settings similar to what are depicted in Figure 32):

• Deny access to this computer from the network (also include S-1-5-114: NT AUTHORITY\Local account and member of Administrators group) (SeDenyNetworkLogonRight)

• Deny logon as a batch job (SeDenyBatchLogonRight)

• Deny logon as a service (SeDenyServiceLogonRight)

• Deny logon locally (SeDenyInteractiveLogonRight)

• Deny logon through Terminal Services (SeDenyRemoteInteractiveLogonRight)

Additionally, using GPOs, permissions can be restricted on endpoints to protect against privilege escalation and potential data theft by reducing the scope of accounts that have the following user rights assignments:

• Debug programs (SeDebugPrivilege) 

• Back up files and directories (SeBackupPrivilege) 

• Restore files and directories (SeRestorePrivilege) 

• Take ownership of files or other objects (SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege)

Detection Opportunities for Privileged Account Logons

Service Account Logon Restrictions

Organizations should also consider enhancing the security of domain-based service accounts to restrict the capability for the accounts to be used for interactive, remote desktop, and, where possible, network-based logons. 

Minimum recommended logon hardening for service accounts (on endpoints where the service account is not required for interactive or remote logon purposes):

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment
  • Deny logon locally (SeDenyInteractiveLogonRight)
  • Deny logon through Terminal Services (SeDenyRemoteInteractiveLogonRight)

Additional recommended logon hardening for service accounts (on endpoints where the service accounts is not required for network-based logon purposes):

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment
  • Deny access to this computer from the network (SeDenyNetworkLogonRight)

If a service account is only required to be leveraged on a single endpoint to run a specific service, the service account can be further restricted to only permit the account's usage on a predefined listing of endpoints (Figure 33).

• Active Directory Users and Computers > Select the account
  • Account tab
    • Log On To button > Select the proper scope of computers for access

Detection Opportunities for Service Account Logons

Managed/Group Managed Service Accounts

Organizations with static service accounts should review the feasibility of migrating the service accounts to be managed service accounts (MSAs) or group managed service accounts (gMSAs).

MSAs were first introduced with the Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory schema (domain-functional level) and provide automatic password management (30-day rotation) for dedicated service accounts that are associated with running services on specific endpoints.

• Standard MSA: The account is associated with a single endpoint, and the complex password for the account is automatically managed and changed on a predefined frequency (30 days by default). While an MSA can only be associated with a single computer account, multiple services on the same endpoint can leverage the MSA.

• Group managed service account (gMSA): First introduced with Windows Server 2012 and are very similar to MSAs, but allow for a single gMSA to be leveraged across multiple endpoints.

Common uses for MSAs and gMSAs:

• Scheduled Tasks

• Internet Information Services (IIS) application pools

• Structured Query Language (SQL) services (SQL 2012 and later) – Express editions are not supported by MSAs.

• Microsoft Exchange services

• Network Load Balancing (clustering) – gMSAs only

• Third-party applications that support MSAs

Note: Threat actors can potentially discover accounts and groups that have permissions to read/leverage the password for a gMSA for privilege escalation and lateral movement. This can be accomplished by leveraging the get-adserviceaccount PowerShell cmdlet and enumerating the msDS-GroupMSAMembership (PrincipalsAllowedToRetrieveManagedPassword) configuration for a gMSA, which stores the security principals that can access the gMSA password. It is important that when configuring managed service accounts, organizations focus on restricting the scope of accounts and groups that have the ability to obtain and leverage the password for the managed service accounts and enforce structured monitoring of these accounts and groups.

For additional information related to MSAs and gMSAs, reference:

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-directory-services-team/managed-service-accounts-understanding-implementing-best/ba-p/397009

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/security/group-managed-service-accounts/group-managed-service-accounts-overview

Detection Opportunities for Managed/Group Managed Service Accounts

Protected Users Security Group

By leveraging the Protected Users security group for privileged accounts, an organization can minimize various exposure factors and common exploitation methods by a threat actor or malware variant obtaining credentials for privileged accounts on disk or in memory from endpoints.

Beginning with Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (and above), the Protected Users security group was introduced to manage credential exposure within an environment. Members of this group automatically have specific protections applied to accounts, including:

• The Kerberos ticket granting ticket (TGT) expires after four hours, rather than the normal 10-hour default setting.

• No NTLM hash for an account is stored in LSASS, since only Kerberos authentication is used (NTLM authentication is disabled for an account).

• Cached credentials are blocked. A domain controller must be available to authenticate the account.

• WDigest authentication is disabled for an account, regardless of an endpoint's applied policy settings.

• DES and RC4 cannot be used for Kerberos preauthentication (Server 2012 R2 or higher); rather, Kerberos with AES encryption will be enforced.

• Accounts cannot be used for either constrained or unconstrained delegation (equivalent to enforcing the Account is sensitive and cannot be delegated setting in Active Directory Users and Computers).

To provide domain controller-side restrictions for members of the Protected Users security group, the domain functional level must be Windows Server 2012 R2 (or higher). Microsoft Security Advisory KB2871997 adds compatibility support for the protections enforced for members of the Protected Users security group for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012 systems.

Successful (Event IDs 303, 304) or failed (Event IDs 100, 104) logon events for members of the Protected Users security group can be recorded on domain controllers within the following event logs:

• %SystemRoot%\System32\Winevt\Logs\Microsoft-Windows-Authentication%4ProtectedUserSuccesses-DomainController.evtx

• %SystemRoot%\System32\Winevt\Logs\Microsoft-Windows-Authentication%4ProtectedUserFailures-DomainController.evtx

The event logs are disabled by default and must be enabled on each domain controller. The PowerShell cmdlets referenced in Figure 35 can be leveraged to enable the event logs for the Protected Users security group on a domain controller.

$log1 = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Eventing.Reader.EventLogConfiguration Microsoft-Windows-Authentication/ProtectedUserSuccesses-DomainController
$log1.IsEnabled=$true
$log1.SaveChanges()

$log2 = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Eventing.Reader.EventLogConfiguration Microsoft-Windows-Authentication/ProtectedUserFailures-DomainController
$log2.IsEnabled=$true
$log2.SaveChanges()

Figure 35: PowerShell cmdlets for enabling event logging for the Protected Users security group on domain controllers

Note: Service accounts (including MSAs) should not be added to the Protected Users security group, as authentication will fail.

Detection Opportunities for the Protected Users Security Group

Clear-Text Password Protections

In addition to restricting access for privileged accounts, controls should be enforced that minimize the exposure of credentials and tokens in memory on endpoints.

On older Windows versions, clear-text passwords are stored in memory (LSASS) to primarily support WDigest authentication. WDigest should be explicitly disabled on all Windows endpoints where it is not disabled by default.

By default, WDigest authentication is disabled in Windows 8.1+ and in Windows Server 2012 R2+.

Beginning with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, after installing KB2871997, WDigest authentication can be configured either by modifying the registry or by using the Microsoft Security Guide GPO template from the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit.

Registry Method

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\WDigest\UseLogonCredential
REG_DWORD = "0"

Figure 36: Registry key and value for disabling WDigest authentication

Another registry setting that should be explicitly configured is the TokenLeakDetectDelaySecs setting (Figure 37), which will clear credentials in memory of logged-off users after 30 seconds, mimicking the behavior of Windows 8.1 and above.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\TokenLeakDetectDelaySecs
REG_DWORD = "30"

Figure 37: Registry key and value for enforcing the TokenLeakDetectDelaySecs setting

Group Policy Method

Using the Microsoft Security Guide Group Policy template, WDigest authentication can be disabled via a GPO setting (Figure 38).

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > MS Security Guide > WDigest Authentication

  • Disabled

Additionally, an organization should verify that Allow* settings are not specified within the registry keys referenced in Figure 39, as this configuration would permit the tspkgs/CredSSP providers to store clear-text passwords in memory.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Credssp\PolicyDefaults
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CredentialsDelegation

Figure 39: Additional registry keys for hardening against clear-text password storage

Group Policy Reprocessing

Threat actors can manually enable WDigest authentication on endpoints by directly modifying the registry (UseLogonCredential configured to a value of 1). Even on endpoints where WDigest authentication is automatically disabled by default, it is recommended to enforce the GPO settings noted as follows, which will enforce automatic group policy reprocessing for the configured (expected) settings on an automated basis.

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Group Policy > Configure security policy processing

  • Enabled - Process even if the Group Policy objects have not changed

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Group Policy > Configure registry policy processing

  • Enabled - Process even if the Group Policy objects have not changed

Note: By default, Group Policy settings are only reprocessed and reapplied if the actual Group Policy was modified prior to the default refresh interval.

As KB2871997 is not applicable for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008, to disable WDigest authentication on these platforms, prior to a system reboot, WDigest needs to be removed from the listing of LSA security packages within the registry (Figure 40 and Figure 41).

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Security Packages

Figure 40: Registry key to modify LSA security packages

Detection Opportunities for WDigest Authentication Conditions

Credential Protections When Using RDP

Restricted Admin Mode for RDP

Restricted Admin mode for RDP can be enabled for all end-user systems assigned to personnel that perform Remote Desktop connections to servers or workstations with administrative credentials. This feature can limit the in-memory exposure of administrative credentials on a destination endpoint when accessed using RDP.

To leverage Restricted Admin RDP, the command referenced in Figure 43 can be invoked.

mstsc.exe /RestrictedAdmin

Figure 43: Command to invoke restricted admin RDP

When an RDP connection uses the Restricted Admin mode, if the authenticating account is an administrator on the destination endpoint, the credentials for the user account are not stored in memory; rather, the context of the user account appears as the destination machine account (domain\destination-computer$).

To leverage Restricted Admin mode for RDP, settings must be enforced on the originating endpoint in addition to the destination endpoint.

Originating Endpoint (Client Mode - Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and above)

A GPO setting must be applied to the originating endpoint initiating the remote desktop session using the Restricted Admin feature.

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Credential Delegation > Restrict delegation of credentials to remote servers

  • Require Restricted Admin > set to Enabled

    • Use the Following Restricted Mode > Required Restricted Admin

Configuring this GPO setting will result in the registry keys noted in Figure 44 being configured on an endpoint.

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CredentialsDelegation\RestrictedRemoteAdministration
0 = Disabled
1 = Enabled

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CredentialsDelegation\RestrictedRemoteAdministrationType
1 = Require Restricted Admin
2 = Require Remote Credential Guard
3 = Restrict Credential Delegation

Figure 44: Registry settings for requiring Restricted Admin mode

Destination Endpoint (Server Mode - Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 and above)

A registry setting will need to be configured (Figure 45).

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\DisableRestrictedAdmin
0 = Enabled
1 = Disabled

Figure 45: Registry setting for enabling or disabling Restricted Admin RDP

Recommended: Set the registry value to 0 to enable Restricted Admin mode.

With Restricted Admin RDP, another setting that should be configured is the DisableRestrictedAdminOutboundCreds registry key (Figure 46).

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\DisableRestrictedAdminOutboundCreds
0 = default value (doesn't exist) - Admin Outbound Creds are Enabled
1 = Admin Outbound Creds are Disabled

Figure 46: Registry setting for disabling admin outbound credentials

Recommended: Set the registry value to 1 to disable admin outbound credentials.

Note: With this setting set to 0, any outbound authentication requests will appear as the system (domain\destination-computer$) that a user connected to using Restricted Admin mode. Setting this to 1 disables the ability to authenticate to any downstream network resources when attempting to authenticate outbound from a system that a user connected to using Restricted Admin mode for RDP.

For additional information regarding Restricted Admin mode for RDP, reference:

• https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2973351

• https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/kfalde/2013/08/14/restricted-admin-mode-for-rdp-in-windows-8-1-2012-r2/

Detection Opportunities for Restricted Admin Mode for RDP

Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard

For Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 endpoints, Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard can be leveraged to reduce the exposure of privileged accounts in memory on destination endpoints when Remote Desktop is used for connectivity. With Remote Credential Guard, all credentials remain on the client (origination system) and are not directly exposed to the destination endpoint. Instead, the destination endpoint requests service tickets from the source as needed.

When a user logs in via RDP to an endpoint that has Remote Credential Guard enabled, none of the SSPs in memory store the account's clear-text password or password hash. Note that Kerberos tickets remain in memory to allow interactive (and single sign-on [SSO]) experiences from the destination server.

The Remote Desktop client (origination) host:

• Must be running at least Windows 10 (v1703) to be able to supply credentials

• Must be running at least Windows 10 (v1607) or Windows Server 2016 to use the user's signed-in credentials (no prompt for credentials)

• User's account must be able to sign into both the client (origination) and the remote (destination) endpoint

• Must be running the Remote Desktop Classic Windows application

• Must use Kerberos authentication to connect to the remote host

• The Remote Desktop Universal Windows Platform application does not support Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard.

Note: If the client cannot connect to a domain controller, then RDP attempts to fall back to NTLM. Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard does not allow NTLM fallback because this would expose credentials to risk.

The Remote Desktop remote (destination) host:

• Must be running at least Windows 10 (v1607) or Windows Server 2016

• Must allow Restricted Admin connections

• Must allow the client's domain user to access Remote Desktop connections

• Must allow delegation of nonexportable credentials

To enable Remote Credential Guard on the client (origination) host using a GPO configuration:

• Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Credentials Delegation > Restrict delegation of credentials to remote servers
  • To require either Restricted Admin mode or Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard, choose Prefer Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard.
    • In this configuration, Remote Credential Guard is preferred, but it will use Restricted Admin mode (if supported) when Remote Credential Guard cannot be used.
    • Neither Remote Credential Guard nor Restricted Admin mode for RDP will send credentials in clear text to the Remote Desktop server.
  • To require Remote Credential Guard, choose Require Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard.
    • In this configuration, a Remote Desktop connection will succeed only if the remote computer meets the requirements for Remote Credential Guard.

To enable Remote Credential Guard on the remote (destination) host, see Figure 49.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Registry Entry: DisableRestrictedAdmin
Value: 0
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa /v DisableRestrictedAdmin /d 0 /t REG_DWORD

Figure 49: Registry key and command options to enable Remote Credential Guard on a remote (destination) host

To leverage Remote Credential Guard, use the command referenced in Figure 50.

mstsc.exe /remoteguard

Figure 50: Command to leverage Remote Credential Guard

Detection Opportunities for Windows Defender Remote Credential Guard

Restrict Remote Usage of Local Accounts

Local accounts that exist on endpoints are often a common avenue leveraged by threat actors to laterally move throughout an environment. This tactic is especially impactful when the password for the built-in local administrator account is configured to the same value across multiple endpoints.

To mitigate the impact of local accounts being leveraged for lateral movement, organizations should consider both limiting the ability of local administrator accounts to establish remote connections and creating unique and randomized passwords for local administrator accounts across the environment.

KB2871997 introduced two well-known SIDs that can be leveraged within GPO settings to restrict the use of local accounts for lateral movement.

• S-1-5-113: NT AUTHORITY\Local account
• S-1-5-114: NT AUTHORITY\Local account and member of Administrators group

Specifically, the SID S-1-5-114: NT AUTHORITY\Local account and member of Administrators group is added to an account's access token if the local account is a member of the BUILTIN\Administrators group. This is the most beneficial SID to leverage to help stop a threat actor (or ransomware variant) that propagates using credentials for any local administrative accounts.

Note: For SID S-1-5-114: NT AUTHORITY\Local account and member of Administrators group, if Failover Clustering is used, this feature should leverage a nonadministrative local account (CLIUSR) for cluster node management. If this account is a member of the local Administrators group on an endpoint that is part of a cluster, blocking the network logon permissions can cause cluster services to fail. Be cautious and thoroughly test this configuration on servers where Failover Clustering is used.

Step 1 – Option 1: S-1-5-114 SID

To mitigate the use of local administrative accounts from being used for lateral movement, use the SID S-1-5-114: NT AUTHORITY\Local account and member of Administrators group within the following settings:

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment
  • Deny access to this computer from the network (SeDenyNetworkLogonRight)
  • Deny logon as a batch job (SeDenyBatchLogonRight)
  • Deny logon as a service (SeDenyServiceLogonRight)
  • Deny logon through Terminal Services (SeDenyRemoteInteractiveLogonRight)
  • Debug programs (SeDebugPrivilege: Permission used for attempted privilege escalation and process injection)

Step 1 – Option 2: UAC Token-Filtering

An additional control that can be enforced via GPO settings pertains to the usage of local accounts for remote administration and connectivity during a network logon. If the full scope of permissions (referenced previously) cannot be implemented in a short timeframe, consider applying the User Account Control (UAC) token-filtering method to local accounts for network-based logons. 

To leverage this configuration via a GPO setting:

1. Download the Security Compliance Toolkit (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55319) to use the MS Security Guide ADMX file. 

2. Once downloaded, the SecGuide.admx and SecGuide.adml files must be copied to the \Windows\PolicyDefinitions and \Windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US directories respectively.

3. If a centralized GPO store is configured for the domain, copy the PolicyDefinitions folder to the C:\Windows\SYSVOL\sysvol\<domain>\Policies folder.

GPO Setting

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > MS Security Guide > Apply UAC restrictions to local accounts on network logons

  • Enabled

Once enabled, the registry value (Figure 53) will be configured on each endpoint.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy

REG_DWORD = "0" (Enabled)

Figure 53: Registry key and value for enabling UAC restrictions for local accounts

When set to 0, remote connections with high-integrity access tokens are only possible using either the plain-text credential or password hash of the RID 500 local administrator (and only then depending on the setting of FilterAdministratorToken, which is configurable via the GPO setting of User Account Control: Admin Approval Mode for the built-in Administrator account).

The FilterAdministratorToken option can either enable (1) or disable (0) (default) Admin Approval mode for the RID 500 local administrator. When enabled, the access token for the RID 500 local administrator account is filtered and therefore UAC is enforced for this account (which can ultimately stop attempts to leverage this account for lateral movement across endpoints).

GPO Setting

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > User Account Control: Admin Approval Mode for the built-in Administrator account

Once enabled, the registry value (Figure 54) will be configured on each endpoint.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\FilterAdministratorToken

REG_DWORD = "1" (Enabled)

Figure 54: Registry key and value for requiring Admin Approval Mode for local administrative accounts

Note: It is also prudent to ensure that the default setting for User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode (EnableLUA option) is not changed from Enabled (default, as shown in Figure 55) to Disabled. If this setting is disabled, all UAC policies are also disabled. With this setting disabled, it is possible to perform privileged remote authentication using plain-text credentials or password hashes with any local account that is a member of the local Administrators group.

GPO Setting

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > MS Security Guide > User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode

  • Enabled

Once enabled, the registry value (Figure 55) will be configured on each endpoint. This is the default setting.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\EnableLUA

REG_DWORD = "1" (Enabled)

Figure 55: Registry key and value for requiring Admin Approval Mode for all local administrative accounts

UAC access token filtering will not affect any domain accounts in the local Administrators group on an endpoint.

Step 2: LAPS

In addition to blocking the use of local administrator accounts from remote authentication to access endpoints, an organization should align a strategy to enforce password randomization for the built-in local administrator account. For many organizations, the easiest way to accomplish this task is by deploying and leveraging Microsoft's Local Administrator Password Solutions (LAPS).

Additional information regarding LAPS.

Detection Opportunities for Local Accounts

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Protections

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) is Microsoft's implementation of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and integrates directly with Active Directory forests and domains. It can be utilized for a variety of purposes, including digital signatures and user authentication. Certificate Templates are used in AD CS to issue certificates that have been preconfigured for particular tasks. They contain settings and rules that are applied to incoming certificate requests and provide instructions on how a valid certificate request is provided.

In June of 2021, SpecterOps published a blog post named Certified Pre-Owned, which details their research into possible attacks against AD CS. Since that publication, Mandiant has continued to observe both threat actors and red teamers enhance targeting of AD CS in support of post-compromise objectives. Mandiant's blog post and hardening guide address the continued abuse scenarios and AD CS attack vectors identified through our frontline observations of recent security breaches.

Discover Vulnerable Certificate Templates

Certificate templates that have been configured and published by AD CS are stored in Active Directory as objects with an object class of pKICertificateTemplate and can be discovered by blue teams as well as threat actors. Any account that is authenticated to Active Directory can query LDAP directly, with the built-in Windows command certutil.exe, or with specialized tools such as PSPKIAudit, Certipy, and Certify. Mandiant recommends using one of these methods to discover vulnerable certificate templates.

Harden Vulnerable Certificate Templates

Once discovered, vulnerable certificate templates should be hardened to prevent abuse.

1. Ensure that all domain controllers and Certificate Authority servers are patched with the latest updates and hotfixes.

2. After installing Windows update (KB5014754) and monitoring/remediating for Event IDs 39 and 41, configure Active Directory to support full enforcement mode to reject authentications based on weaker mappings in certificates.

3. Using one of the aforementioned methods, regularly review published certificate templates, specifically for any settings related to SAN specifications configured in existing templates.

4. Review the security permissions assigned to all published certificate templates and validate the scope of enrollment and write permissions are delegated to the correct security principals.

5. Review published templates configured with the following Enhanced Key Usages (EKUs) that support domain authentication and verify the operational requirement for these configurations.

• Any Purpose (2.5.29.37.0)

• Subordinate CA (None)

• Client Authentication (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.2)

• PKINIT Client Authentication (1.3.6.1.5.2.3.4)

• Smart Card Logon (1.3.6.1.4.1.311.20.2.2)

• Everyone

• NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users

• Domain Users

• Domain Computers

Detection Opportunities for AD CS Abuse

5. Preventing Destructive Actions in Kubernetes and CI/CD Pipelines

Organizations should implement a proactive, defense-in-depth technical hardening strategy to systematically address foundational security gaps and mitigate the risk of destructive actions across their Kubernetes environments and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery or Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. Adversaries increasingly target the CI/CD pipeline and the Kubernetes control plane because they serve as centralized hubs with direct access to application deployments and underlying infrastructure.

• Source and Build Compromise: Threat actors target code repositories (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps) and build environments to steal injected environment variables and secrets. Attackers can then commit malicious workflow files designed to exfiltrate repository data or deploy unauthorized infrastructure.

• Container Registry Poisoning: By compromising developer credentials or CI/CD pipeline permissions, attackers overwrite legitimate application images in the container registry. When the Kubernetes cluster pulls the updated image, it unknowingly deploys a poisoned container embedded with backdoors, ransomware, or destructive data-wiping logic.

• Cluster-Level Destruction: Once an attacker gains a foothold inside the Kubernetes cluster, they often abuse over-permissive role-based access control (RBAC) configurations. This provides the capability to execute destructive commands using application programming interfaces (APIs) (e.g., kubectl delete deployments), wipe persistent volumes, or delete critical namespaces, effectively causing a loss of availability and application denial of service.

• Secrets Extraction and Lateral Movement: Attackers routinely execute Kubernetes-specific attack tools to harvest secrets from compromised Kubernetes pods. These secrets often contain database passwords and cloud identity and access management (IAM) keys, allowing the attacker to pivot out of the cluster and impact cloud-based resources.

Additional information related to securing CI/CD.

Hardening and Mitigation Guidance

To defend against CI/CD compromises and destructive actions within Kubernetes, organizations must enforce strict identity boundaries, cryptographic trust, and a least-privilege architecture.

• Isolate the Kubernetes Control Plane: Disable unrestricted and public internet access to the Kubernetes API server. For managed services like GKE, EKS, and AKS, ensure the control plane is configured as a private endpoint or heavily restricted via authorized network IP allow-listing. Access to the API should only be permitted from trusted, designated internal management subnets or secure corporate VPNs.

• Secure Management Interfaces and CI/CD Pipelines: Enforce mandatory MFA for all access to infrastructure management platforms, including source code repositories such as GitLab/GitHub, and container registries. Utilize hardened container images (e.g., Chainguard containers, Docker Hardened Images) as base images. Implement software supply chain security frameworks (like SLSA) by requiring image signing, provenance generation, and admission controllers (such as Binary Authorization). This ensures that the Kubernetes cluster will definitively reject and block any unverified or poisoned container images from running.

• Enforce Strict RBAC and Least Privilege: To limit the "blast radius" of a compromised pod, restrict the use of the cluster-admin role and strictly prohibit wildcard (*) permissions for standard service accounts. Workloads must run under strict security contexts—blocking containers from executing as root, preventing privilege escalation, and restricting access to the underlying worker node (e.g., disabling hostPID and hostNetwork).

• Implement Immutable Cluster Backups: Protect the cluster's state (etcd) and stateful workload data (Persistent Volumes) by utilizing immutable backup repositories. This ensures that even if an attacker gains administrative access to the cluster or CI/CD pipeline and attempts to maliciously delete all resources, the backups cannot be destroyed or altered.

• Enable Audit Logging and Threat Detection: Ensure Kubernetes Control Plane audit logs, node-level telemetry, and CI/CD pipeline logs are actively forwarded to a centralized SIEM. Deploy dedicated container threat detection capabilities to immediately alert on malicious exec commands, suspicious Kubernetes enumeration tools, or bulk data deletion attempts within the pods.

Additional information related to securing Kubernetes.

Detection Opportunities for Kubernetes and CI/CD

Conclusion

Destructive attacks, including ransomware, pose a serious threat to organizations. This blog post provides practical guidance on protecting against common techniques used by threat actors for initial access, reconnaissance, privilege escalation, and mission objectives. This blog post should not be considered as a comprehensive defensive guide for every tactic, but it can serve as a valuable resource for organizations to prepare for such attacks. It is based on front-line expertise with helping organizations prepare, contain, eradicate, and recover from potentially destructive threat actors and incidents.

Written by: Casey Charrier, James Sadowski, Zander Work, Clement Lecigne, Benoît Sevens, Fred Plan

Executive Summary

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) tracked 90 zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in-the-wild in 2025. Although that volume of zero-days is lower than the record high observed in 2023 (100), it is higher than 2024’s count (78) and remained within the 60–100 range established over the previous four years, indicating a trend toward stabilization at these levels.

In 2025, we continued to observe the structural shift, first identified in 2024, toward increased enterprise exploitation. Both the raw number (43) and proportion (48%) of vulnerabilities impacting enterprise technologies reached all-time highs, accounting for almost 50% of total zero-days exploited in 2025. We observed a sustained decrease in detected browser-based exploitation, which fell to historical lows, while seeing increased abuse of operating system vulnerabilities.

State-sponsored espionage groups continue to prioritize edge devices and security appliances as prime entry points into victim networks, with just over half of attributed zero-day exploitation by these groups focused on these technologies. Commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) maintained an interest in mobile and browser exploitation, adapting and expanding their exploit chains to bypass more recently implemented security boundaries and other mobile security improvements. Multiple intrusions linked to BRICKSTORM malware deployment demonstrated a range of objectives, but the targeting of technology companies demonstrated the potential theft of valuable IP to further the development of zero-day exploits.

Key Takeaways

1. Complexity drives higher mobile vulnerability counts.Mobile zero-day discovery counts fluctuated over the last three years, dropping from 17 in 2023 to 9 in 2024, before rebounding to 15 in 2025. As vendor mitigations evolve and increasingly prevent more simplistic exploitation, threat actors have been forced to expand or adjust their techniques. In some cases, attackers have increased the number of chained vulnerabilities to reach desired levels of access within highly protected components. Conversely, threat actors have also managed successful exploitation with fewer or singular bugs by targeting lower levels of access within a single capability, such as an application or service.
2. Enterprise software and edge devices remain prime targets.Marking a new high, 48% of 2025’s zero-days targeted enterprise-grade technology. Increased exploitation of security and networking devices highlights the critical risk that can be posed by trusted edge infrastructure, while targeting of enterprise software exhibits the value of highly interconnected platforms that provide privileged access across networks and data assets. Networking and security appliances continued to be highly targeted, by a variety of threat actors, to gain initial access.
3. Commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) further reduce barriers to zero-day access. For the first time since we began tracking zero-day exploitation, we attributed more zero-days to CSVs than to traditional state-sponsored cyber espionage groups. This illustrates the expansion of access to zero-day exploitation via these vendors to a wider array of customers than ever before.
4. People’s Republic of China (PRC)-nexus cyber espionage groups continue to dominate traditional state-sponsored espionage zero-day exploitation. Consistent with the trend we have observed for nearly a decade, in comparison to other state sponsors, PRC-nexus groups remained the most prolific users of zero-day vulnerabilities in 2025. These groups, such as UNC5221 and UNC3886, continued to focus heavily on security appliances and edge devices to maintain persistent access to strategic targets.
5. Zero-day exploitation by financially motivated threat groups ties previous high. In 2025, we attributed the exploitation of 9 zero-days to confirmed or likely financially motivated threat groups. This nearly matches the total volume of 2023 and represents a higher proportion of all attributed vulnerabilities in 2025. 

2026 Zero-Day Forecast

Targets and Techniques Continue to Expand

As certain vendors continue to drive improvements that have made vulnerability exploitation more difficult, particularly in the browser and mobile space, adversaries will continue to adapt with more expansive techniques and diverse targets. Enterprise exploitation will continue to be further enabled by the breadth of applications used across infrastructure. Increased numbers of software, devices, and applications expand attack surfaces, with successful exploitation requiring only a single point of failure to achieve a breach.

AI Changes the Game

We anticipate that AI will accelerate the ongoing race between attackers and defenders in 2026 creating a more dynamic threat environment. We expect adversaries will utilize AI to automate and scale attacks by accelerating reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, and exploit development. Reducing the time required for these phases will place further pressure on defenders to better detect and respond to zero-day exploitation. At the same time, AI will empower defenders to harness tools like agentic solutions to enhance security operations. AI agents can proactively discover and help patch previously unknown security flaws, enabling vendors to neutralize vulnerabilities before exploitation. 

Using Access for Research

A BRICKSTORM malware campaign in 2025, attributed to PRC-nexus espionage operators, may indicate a new paradigm for zero-day exploitation where data theft has the potential to enable long-term zero-day development. Instead of just exfiltrating sensitive client data, the threat actors targeted intellectual property from the victim companies, potentially including source code and proprietary development documents. This IP could be used to discover new vulnerabilities in the vendor's software, not only posing a threat to the victims themselves but also to victims’ downstream customers.

Scope

This report describes what Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) knows about zero-day exploitation in 2025. GTIG defines a zero-day as a vulnerability that was maliciously exploited in the wild before a patch was made publicly available. The following analysis leverages original research conducted by GTIG combined with reliable open-source reporting, though we cannot independently confirm the reports of every source. 

Research in this space is dynamic and the numbers may adjust due to the ongoing discovery of past incidents. Our analysis represents exploitation tracked by GTIG but may not reflect all zero-day exploitation. The numbers presented here reflect our best understanding of current data, and we note that all zero-days included in our 2025 dataset have patches available. GTIG acknowledges that the trends observed and discussed in this report are based on detected and disclosed zero-days, with a cutoff date of Dec. 31, 2025. 

A Numerical Analysis

GTIG tracked 90 vulnerabilities that were disclosed in 2025 and exploited as zero-days. This number is consistent with a consolidating upward trend that we have observed over the last five years; the total annual volume of zero-days has fluctuated within a 60-100 range over this time period, but has remained elevated compared to pre-2021 levels. As certain categories of exploitation shift over time, whether due to vendor mitigations or newer high-value opportunities, total zero-day counts continue to appear within an expected range, rather than seeing drastic overall decreases or increases.

Enterprise Exploitation Expands Further in 2025

Enterprise Technologies

We identified 43 (48%) zero-days in enterprise software and appliances in 2025, up from 36 (46%) in 2024. This consistent proportion underscores the shift toward enterprise infrastructure as a structural change in the threat landscape, reflecting the value of tools that enable privilege escalation, high-level access, and broad scale of impact.

• Security & Networking: These vulnerabilities made up about half (21) of the enterprise-related zero-days in 2025, remaining a prominent target for achieving code execution and unauthorized access via privileged infrastructure components. A lack of input validation and incomplete authorization processes were common flaws within these products, demonstrating how basic systemic failures continue to persist, but are fixable with proper implementation standards and approaches. Edge devices–often including security and networking devices–sit at the perimeter of an organization's infrastructure and remain high value targets. The absence of EDR technology on most edge devices, like routers, switches, and security appliances, can create a blind spot for defenders, making it an ideal attack surface. This limitation can hinder the ability to detect anomalies or gather host-based evidence once these devices are compromised. While 14 zero-days in 2025 were identified as affecting edge devices, this figure likely underrepresents the true scale of activity due to inhibited detection capabilities.
• Enterprise Software: High-profile exploitation of enterprise tools and virtualization technologies demonstrates that attackers are deeply embedding themselves in critical business infrastructure. Threat actors continue to pursue the most vulnerable and exposed assets to work around mitigations that may exist in specific areas of or products within an infrastructure.

End User Platforms and Products

In 2025, 52% (47) of the tracked zero-days were used to exploit end-user platforms and products.

• Operating Systems (OSs): OSs, including both desktop and mobile, were the most exploited product category in 2025, accounting for 44% (39) of all zero-days. This is a rise from previous years when comparing both raw numbers (31 in 2024, and 33 in 2023) and proportions of total zero-day exploitation (40% in 2024 and 33% in 2023). Desktop OS zero-days have fluctuated between 16 and 23 annually while maintaining a gradual upward trajectory, illustrating the foundational role of these platforms and the massive scale of effect permitted by OS-level exploitation.

• Mobile Devices: Mobile OS exploitation in particular saw a notable increase, with a total of 15 zero-days in 2025 compared to the 9 identified in 2024. Given that we observed 17 mobile-related zero-days in 2023, the following factors likely accounted for this temporary decline and the subsequent resurgence in activity:

• Multiple exploit chains discovered in 2025 included three or more vulnerabilities, inflating the number of individual vulnerabilities required to achieve a single objective.

• Threat researchers discovered more complete exploit chains in 2025 than have been found in the past, when sometimes only partial chains or a single vulnerability was identified and could be accounted for.

• Threat actors, and CSVs in particular, have found novel techniques to bypass new security boundary implementations.

• Browsers: Browsers accounted for less than 10% of 2025 zero-day exploitation, a marked decrease from the browser-heavy years of 2021-2022. This suggests that browser hardening measures are working. However, we also assess that attackers’ operational security has improved and therefore made their actions more difficult to observe and track, potentially reducing the volume of observed exploitation in this space.

Exploitation by Vendor

2025’s exploited vendors followed the same pattern we observed last year, with big tech experiencing the most zero-day exploitation and security vendors following directly behind. Big tech companies continue to dominate the user base for consumer products, making them prime targets for exploitation, particularly in desktop OSs, browsers and mobile systems. Cisco and Fortinet remain commonly targeted networking and security vendors, while Ivanti and VMware continue to see exploitation that reflects the high value threat actors place on VPNs and virtualization platforms.

We observed 20 vendors who were exploited by just one zero-day each, further demonstrating threat actors’ success in targeting varying vendors and products to find successful footholds in desired targets.

Types of Exploited Vulnerabilities

As observed in prior years, zero-day exploitation was primarily used to achieve remote code execution, followed by gaining privilege escalation. These were especially common consequences in observed exploitation of big tech and security vendors. Both code execution and unauthorized access were common goals of network and edge infrastructure exploitation, displaying the advantage of exploiting high-privilege assets with widespread reach across systems and networks.

2025 saw an array of both structural design flaws and pervasive implementation issues, exemplifying the omnipresence of known, yet prolific, problems. 

• Injection & Deserialization: Command injection and deserialization were critical vectors in the enterprise space. These types of vulnerabilities often allow for reliable remote code execution (RCE) without the complexity of memory corruption exploits. SQL and command injection vulnerabilities were common in web-facing enterprise appliances, providing rudimentary avenues for initial access.
• Memory Corruption: Threat actors continued to rely on memory corruption, with memory safety issues (particularly use-after-free [UAF] and out-of-bounds write) accounting for roughly 35% of the vulnerabilities. UAF weaknesses remained a top vector for user-centered products like browsers and OS kernels.
• Access Control: The prevalence of authentication and authorization bypass vulnerabilities highlights the difficulty edge devices face in securing both the network perimeter and their own administrative interfaces.
• Logic and Design Flaws: Frequently exploited in enterprise appliances, these issues represent fundamental architectural weaknesses where the system’s intended logic or design is inherently insecure. Because the software is behaving as designed, these flaws are harder for vendors to detect.

Who Is Driving Exploitation

Commercial Surveillance Vendor Exploitation Grows

For the first time since we started tracking zero-day exploitation, we attributed more exploitation to CSVs than to traditional state-sponsored cyber espionage groups. Despite these actors’ increased focus on operational security that likely hinders discovery, this continues to reflect a trend we began to observe over the last several years–a growing proportion of zero-day exploitation is conducted by CSVs and/or their customers, demonstrating a slow but sure movement in the landscape. Historically, traditional state-sponsored cyber espionage groups have been the most prolific attributed users of zero-day vulnerabilities. Over the last few years, the increase of zero-day exploitation attributed to CSVs and their customers has demonstrated the growing ability of these vendors to provide zero-day access to a wider range of threat actors than ever before. 

GTIG has reported extensively on the capabilities CSVs provide their clients as well as how many CSV customers use zero-day exploits in attacks which erode civil liberties and human rights. In late 2025, we reported on how Intellexa, a prolific procurer and user of zero-days, adapted its operations and tool suite and continues to deliver extremely capable spyware to high paying customers. 

People’s Republic of China (PRC)-Nexus Cyber Espionage Groups Still Most Prolific 

Although the proportion of 2025 zero-day exploitation that we attributed to traditional state-sponsored cyber espionage groups was lower than in previous years, these groups remained significant developers and users of zero-day exploits in 2025. Consistent with the trend we have observed for nearly a decade, PRC-nexus cyber espionage groups remained the most prolific users of zero-days across state actors in 2025. We attributed the use of at least 10 zero-days to assessed PRC-nexus cyber espionage groups. This was double what we attributed to these groups in 2024, but below the 12 zero-days we attributed in 2023. PRC-nexus espionage zero-day exploitation continued to focus on edge and networking devices that are difficult to monitor, allowing them to maintain long-term footholds in strategic networks. Examples of this include the exploitation of CVE-2025-21590 by UNC3886 and the exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 by UNC5221.

Observed mass exploitation of vulnerabilities suggests that PRC-nexus espionage operators are increasingly adept at developing, sharing, and distributing exploits among themselves. Historically, zero-day exploits were closely held and leveraged only by the most resourced threat groups. Over time, however, we have observed that an increasing number of activity clusters are exploiting vulnerabilities closer to public disclosure, indicating that PRC-nexus espionage operators have potentially reduced the time to both develop exploits and distribute them among otherwise separate groups. This is reflected not only in the gradual proliferation of exploit code targeting specific vulnerabilities, but also by the shrinking gap between the public disclosure of n-day vulnerabilities and their widespread exploitation by multiple groups. 

In sharp contrast to 2024, during which we attributed the exploitation of five zero-days to North Korean state-sponsored threat actors, we did not attribute any zero-days to North Korean groups in 2025.

Financially Motivated Exploitation Spikes

We tracked the exploitation in 2025 of nine zero-days by likely or confirmed financially motivated threat groups, including the reported exploitation of two zero-days in operations that led to ransomware deployment. This almost ties the previous high of 10 zero-days we attributed to financially motivated groups in 2023 and is nearly double the five zero-days we attributed to financially motivated actors in 2024. Although the total volume of zero-day exploitation we have attributed to financially motivated groups has varied year over year, the sustained presence of these threat actors in the zero-day landscape reflects their continued investment in zero-day exploit development and deployment. Financially motivated actors, including ransomware affiliates, were linked to a substantial number of enterprise exploits, reflecting a trend we observed across multiple motivations.

• We observed zero-day exploitation by FIN11 or associated clusters in four of the last five years–2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025. In late September 2025, GTIG began tracking a new, large-scale extortion campaign by a threat actor claiming affiliation with the CL0P extortion brand, which has predominantly been used by FIN11. The actor sent a high volume of emails to executives at numerous organizations, alleging the theft of sensitive data from the victims' Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) environments. Our analysis indicated that the CL0P extortion campaign followed months of intrusion activity targeting EBS customer environments. The threat actor exploited CVE-2025-61882 and/or CVE-2025-61884 as a zero-day against Oracle EBS customers as early as Aug. 9, 2025, weeks before a patch was available, with additional suspicious activity dating back to July 10, 2025.
• GTIG identified UNC2165, a financially motivated group that overlaps with public reporting on Evil Corp and has prominent members in Russia, leveraging CVE-2025-8088 to distribute malware in mid-July 2025. This activity marked the first instance where we observed UNC2165 use a zero-day for initial access. Additional evidence from underground activity and VirusTotal RAR archive submissions indicate that CVE-2025-8088 was also exploited during this same period by other actors, including a threat cluster with suspected overlaps with CIGAR/UNC4895 (publicly reported as RomCom). UNC4895 is another Russian threat group that has conducted both financially motivated and espionage operations, including the exploitation of two other zero-days in 2024.