Tristan Bennett, Seamless Intelligence; Lee Christensen, SpecterOps; Thirumalai Natarajan, Mandiant
Adversaries may steal or forge certificates used for authentication to access remote systems or resources. Digital certificates are often used to sign and encrypt messages and/or files. Certificates are also used as authentication material. For example, Entra ID device certificates and Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) certificates bind to an identity and can be used as credentials for domain accounts.[1][2]
Authentication certificates can be both stolen and forged. For example, AD CS certificates can be stolen from encrypted storage (in the Registry or files)[3], misplaced certificate files (i.e. Unsecured Credentials), or directly from the Windows certificate store via various crypto APIs.[4][5][6] With appropriate enrollment rights, users and/or machines within a domain can also request and/or manually renew certificates from enterprise certificate authorities (CA). This enrollment process defines various settings and permissions associated with the certificate. Of note, the certificate’s extended key usage (EKU) values define signing, encryption, and authentication use cases, while the certificate’s subject alternative name (SAN) values define the certificate owner’s alternate names.[7]
Abusing certificates for authentication credentials may enable other behaviors such as Lateral Movement. Certificate-related misconfigurations may also enable opportunities for Privilege Escalation, by way of allowing users to impersonate or assume privileged accounts or permissions via the identities (SANs) associated with a certificate. These abuses may also enable Persistence via stealing or forging certificates that can be used as Valid Accounts for the duration of the certificate's validity, despite user password resets. Authentication certificates can also be stolen and forged for machine accounts.
Adversaries who have access to root (or subordinate) CA certificate private keys (or mechanisms protecting/managing these keys) may also establish Persistence by forging arbitrary authentication certificates for the victim domain (known as “golden” certificates).[8] Adversaries may also target certificates and related services in order to access other forms of credentials, such as Golden Ticket ticket-granting tickets (TGT) or NTLM plaintext.[8]
Threat groups45th percentile · 55% of ATT&CK techniques have more threat groups attributed.
0
CampaignsNone recorded
CampaignsNone recorded · 54% of ATT&CK techniques have none either.
3
Tools & malware57th pct
Tools & malware57th percentile · 51% of ATT&CK techniques have fewer tools implementing them.
29
Detection rulesTop 10%
Detection rules90th percentile · 90% of ATT&CK techniques have fewer detection rules written.
Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates MITRE reference T1649
45th pctamong all ATT&CK techniques for number of groups
1 group has been recorded using this technique. Newest first; each entry carries MITRE’s procedure text and a link to the group’s full record. Click a name to filter the rules below.
Has abused misconfigured AD CS certificate templates to impersonate admin users and create additional authentication certificates.1
created 2017-05-311 referenceaka IRON RITUAL
All 1 groups for this technique
3 software entries are documented implementing this technique. MITRE files each as a tool or as malware; newest first, then by how many groups carry them.
Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates detection strategy DET0240
MITRE names one behaviour worth catching for this technique and breaks it into 4 analytics, one per platform. Each carries the log sources it needs and the fields you tune per environment.
Detection Strategy for Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates
Enterprise
4 platforms
AN0671 · Windows
Monitor for abnormal certificate enrollment and usage activity in Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), registry access to certificate storage locations, and unusual process executions that attempt to export or access private keys.
Log sources
The data this analytic draws on. You do not need every component — each one you already collect covers part of it. Each links to its ATT&CK record.
MITRE calls these the analytic’s mutable elements: the thresholds and filters you set for your own environment.
Field
What you tune
EKU_Thresholds
Organizations may tune which Extended Key Usage (EKU) values are considered risky.
TimeWindow
Defines how quickly multiple certificate enrollments from the same entity should trigger correlation alerts.
LogonContext
Differentiate between service accounts and interactive user accounts to reduce false positives.
AN0672 · Linux
Monitor for file access to certificate directories, commands invoking OpenSSL or PKCS#12 utilities to export or modify certificates, and processes accessing sensitive key storage paths.
Log sources
The data this analytic draws on. You do not need every component — each one you already collect covers part of it. Each links to its ATT&CK record.
Differentiate root/system accounts versus user-level access to key material.
AN0673 · macOS
Monitor for security commands and API calls interacting with the Keychain, as well as file access attempts to stored certificates and private keys in ~/Library/Keychains or /Library/Keychains.
Log sources
The data this analytic draws on. You do not need every component — each one you already collect covers part of it. Each links to its ATT&CK record.
process calling security find-certificate, export, or import
Tunable fields
MITRE calls these the analytic’s mutable elements: the thresholds and filters you set for your own environment.
Field
What you tune
ApplicationAllowList
Whitelist legitimate apps that interact with Keychain to reduce false positives.
AN0674 · Identity Provider
Monitor for abnormal certificate enrollment events in identity platforms, unexpected use of token-signing certificates, and unusual CA configuration modifications.
Log sources
The data this analytic draws on. You do not need every component — each one you already collect covers part of it. Each links to its ATT&CK record.
Ensure certificate authorities (CA) are properly secured, including treating CA servers (and other resources hosting CA certificates) as tier 0 assets. Harden abusable CA settings and attributes.
For example, consider disabling the usage of AD CS certificate SANs within relevant authentication protocol settings to enforce strict user mappings and prevent certificates from authenticating as other identifies. Also consider enforcing CA Certificate Manager approval for the templates that include SAN as an issuance requirement.
Check and remediate unneeded existing authentication certificates as well as common abusable misconfigurations of CA settings and permissions, such as AD CS certificate enrollment permissions and published overly permissive certificate templates (which define available settings for created certificates). For example, available AD CS certificate templates can be checked via the Certificate Authority MMC snap-in (certsrv.msc). certutil.exe can also be used to examine various information within an AD CS CA database.
Consider disabling old/dangerous authentication protocols (e.g. NTLM), as well as unnecessary certificate features, such as potentially vulnerable AD CS web and other enrollment server roles.
Ensure certificates as well as associated private keys are appropriately secured. Consider utilizing additional hardware credential protections such as trusted platform modules (TPM) or hardware security modules (HSM). Enforce HTTPS and enable Extended Protection for
Authentication.
Tests1Executorspowershell 1Need elevation0 of 1Have prerequisites0Have cleanup1Platformswindows
#
Test
Platform
Executor
Elevation
Prereqs
Cleanup
Ref
01
Staging Local Certificates via Export-Certificate
windows
powershell
—
—
Yes
Export all user certificates and add to a compressed archive.
The following analytic detects the use of the Certify tool via an in-memory PowerShell function to enumerate Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) environments. (...)
The following analytic detects the use of the Certipy tool to enumerate Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) environments by identifying unique file modifications. (...)
Detects Certipy execution, a tool for Active Directory Certificate Services enumeration and abuse based on PE metadata characteristics and common command line arguments.
The following analytic detects when a new certificate is requested or granted against Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) using a Subject Alternative Name (SAN). (...)
The following analytic detects when a suspicious certificate with a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) is issued using Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) and then immediately used for authentication. (...)
The following analytic detects the use of the PowerShell cmdlet 'export-certificate' executed via the command line, indicating an attempt to export a certificate from the local Windows Certificate Store. (...)
The following analytic detects the use of the PowerShell cmdlet `export-pfxcertificate` on the command line, indicating an attempt to export a certificate from the local Windows Certificate Store. (...)