Introduction

Windows Privileges are special rights that grant users the ability to perform sensitive, system-wide operations. In some specific cases, they can even completely override standard Access Control List (ACL) checks.

This post will dive into the architecture of Windows access tokens and their associated privileges, we will also see how BloodHound can be leveraged to map these high-value privileges across an entire domain, revealing hidden pathways to privilege escalation.

Access Tokens 101

Before diving into privilege escalation vulnerabilities related to Windows privileges, it is important to first understand how access tokens work. If you are already familiar with these concepts, feel free to skip ahead.

Access tokens are Windows objects that describe the security context of a process or thread. They are used to represent the identity of a user on a machine, here is a non-exhaustive list of attributes that access tokens have:

• SID: The unique identifier of the user represented by the token.
• Type: The type of access token (primary or impersonation).
• Groups: The groups of the user described by the token.
• Privileges: The privileges of the user, this is the main field of interest in our case.

Access tokens can easily be inspected using Process Hacker:

View on an access token using Process Hacker.

Every time a process or thread tries to access a resource like a file, registry key or any object securable with a DACL, the Windows kernel checks the caller’s access token against the DACL of the object that is being accessed to determine whether to grant or deny access.

A Discretionary Access Control List (DACL) is a type of ACL, an ACL is a windows structure that contains multiple Access Control Entry (ACE). In the context of a DACL, ACEs are used to determine if a principal should be allowed or not to perform an action on an object and work according to the following (simplified) schema:

Simplified process of access checking on Windows

The other possible type of ACL is called System Access Control List (SACL), it works the same way as a DACL except that its purpose is to log access.

This is how access checking on Windows usually works. However, as always, there are exceptions. Such exceptions occur because of Windows privileges, which may allow to completely bypass ACL checks! The implications are detailed in the next section.

Access Token Privileges

While DACLs determine a user’s rights to interact with an object, privileges operate on a different, more powerful level.

A privilege is a special right granted to an account to perform a sensitive, system-wide operation. Some privileges allow to completely bypass ACL checks.

For example, if a user’s access token includes the SeBackupPrivilege, which allows users to backup files and directories, this user will be able to read any file on the system, even if the file’s DACL explicitly denies them access. Windows grants this right to ensure that backup software can function regardless of individual file permissions.

Let us now cover how certain privileges can be maliciously abused to escalate local privileges.

SeDebugPrivilege

SeDebugPrivilege is a good example of a privilege that can be easily be abused, as its name suggests it was created to allow the debugging of Windows objects such as processes or threads. Under the hood, this privilege allows its owner to completely bypass checks related to getting a handle onto a process or thread. Thanks to this privilege, you can retrieve a handle onto any process or thread. This handle may then be used to perform actions on the process or thread, such as terminate it, read its memory, change its access token, etc.

As you may have guessed, this privilege leaves an attacker with multiple possibilities to elevate their privileges, here is a non-exhaustive list:

• Write a shellcode to a privileged process’ memory and then create a thread to execute this shellcode. The shellcode will run with the same privileges as the targeted process.
• Dump LSASS memory and use mimikatz to retrieve credentials.

Another approach could be to retrieve the access token of a process using advapi32!OpenProcessToken and then impersonate this token. However, having access to a token object does not mean you can use it. Indeed, token assignment checks are strict and restrictive, denying the described approach. Fortunately, this token assignment check can be bypassed using the SeImpersonatePrivilege or SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege privilege as demonstrated in the next section.

SeImpersonatePrivilege & SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege

The SeImpersonatePrivilege privilege is perhaps the most (in)famous Windows privilege due to how often it is exploited by attackers to escalate their privileges. Indeed, this privilege is often used by IIS, MSSQL and other Windows services, so when getting Remote Code Execution (RCE) on a windows host through these services, attackers often get this privilege. This privilege allows a thread to impersonate the access token of any user.

However, how can such token be retrieved in the first place? As we have seen, if we have the SeDebugPrivilege privilege, we can easily obtain a token using advapi32!OpenProcessToken. But what if it is not the case? In such cases, exploits from the Potato family can be used. They usually consist in coercing a privileged process into authenticating to an attacker controlled server and impersonate the privileged process’ token.

The SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege privilege works similarly to the SeImpersonatePrivilege privilege, but with one minor difference: the type of possible token to use. Indeed, SeImpersonatePrivilege allows a thread to temporarily adopt an impersonation token while SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege allows for the creation of a new process using a primary token.

A primary access token is associated with a process and represents the security context of the user running this process, whereas an impersonation access token is used by a thread within a process to temporarily adopt a different security context, typically to access resources on behalf of a client.

There are a lot of more interesting privileges like SeLoadDriverPrivilege, SeBackupPrivilege, SeCreateTokenPrivilege, etc. that can be leveraged for privilege escalation to talk about, but they will not be covered in this article. Instead, let us now talk about logon rights.

Logon Rights

While privileges determine what a process can do once it is running, logon rights define how a user account is allowed to gain initial access to a computer. These rights are enforced using security policies through the Local Security Authority (LSA). If a user does not have the necessary logon right, the LSA will reject the logon attempt before an access token is even generated, effectively preventing the user from performing any action on the system.

Here is the list of available logon rights and their effect:

• SeInteractiveLogonRight: This right determines which accounts can log on locally on a computer.
• SeRemoteInteractiveLogonRight: This right determines which accounts can log on remotely using for example the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
• SeNetworkLogonRight: This right is used to allow accessing a computer from the network (e.g. access shares, RPC interfaces).
• SeServiceLogonRight: This allows an account to log on as a service, this is vital for service accounts as it allows them to run as background services. This does not mean the account can create nor start services.
• SeBatchLogonRight: This allows an account to be used by a scheduled task. This does not mean the account can create new scheduled tasks.

On the other hand, all of these rights have their opposite which denies authentication instead (e.g. SeDenyInteractiveLogonRight, SeDenyNetworkLogonRight, etc.), deny rights have precedence over allow rights.

While these rights cannot be abused, they are important to understand because they define the way you can access systems. Having a good understanding of these rights can be even more impactful for defenders because if well configured, they can help to prevent lateral movement.

For example, in my lab, the user nioz is Domain Admin and so should by default be able to access any machine on the network. However, the SeDenyNetworkLogonRight privilege has been added to this user on the pki machine. This prevents this user from being able to access its SMB shares and RPC and is a really effective way to prevent lateral movement for defenders.

Local Security Policy configured to prevent the user ‘nioz’ from logging in from the network.

This prevents this account from performing lateral movement techniques such as PsExec because the user can not create the service nor drop a file via SMB.

User ‘nioz’ denied from accessing a machine because of insufficient logon rights.

Restricting Privileges via User Account Control (UAC)

User Account Control (UAC) is a well-known Windows feature that is used to enforce the principle of least privilege to processes. Its goal is to ensure that programs run with the minimum permissions they need to function. When a program wants to perform an action that could affect the entire system (such as installing a software or changing a system setting), UAC steps in and asks the user for permission.

Under the hood, when a privileged user successfully logs in interactively, the lsass.exe process, which was handling the user’s authentication, will create two access tokens for the session.

The first one is a highly privileged token representing the user’s full security context.

On the other hand, the second token, the filtered one, is created by passing the privileged token through the ntdll!NtFilterToken function. This call removes sensitive privileges and set administrative SID groups to "Deny only" to create a less privileged access token. This token is then used to create a explorer.exe process for the session of the user.

The access token of a explorer.exe process can be verified using Process Hacker:

Token of the explorer.exe process

From there, explorer.exe will be the parent process of your newly spawned process and as all Windows processes inherit the access token of their parent by default, these will be low privileged too. Thus, when looking for local privilege escalation opportunities, you should always list your token’s privileges in an elevated context. Otherwise, you will always miss impactful privileges.

To create a new process with a highly privileged token, you must “Run the process as Administrator”. From there, the request is handled by the Application Information Service which launches the secure Consent UI desktop and displays the famous UAC prompt. The user must then authorize the action by clicking “Yes” or by providing credentials if configured this way. If authorized, the system retrieves the original, unfiltered access token that was generated at logon and uses it to launch the process.

However, despite the fact that this architecture may look secure, UAC has never really been a problem for attackers as it is subject to a lot of bypasses.

Collecting privileges

Now that the impacts of privileges and logon rights on Windows environment have been explained, let us see how it is possible to remotely gather these rights. There are two main ways of collecting them and both of these methods have been implemented through this SharpHoundCommon Pull Request:

• Parse domain GPOs and collect privileges from the GptTmpl.inf file.
• Connect to each system remotely via RPC and ask the LSA for each user privilege using for example the advapi32!LsaEnumerateAccountsWithUserRight Windows API.

Both methods have advantages and downsides. For instance, connecting remotely to each system is noisy and requires local admin privileges on the machine. On the other hand, parsing GPOs is stealth and only needs a low privileged user. However, you may miss some privileges if they were not applied using GPOs.

Collecting privileges by parsing GPOs

Collecting privileges by parsing GPOs is relatively easy and can be done with a few LDAP queries. For the sake of this demonstration, we will perform the queries manually with ldeep, but the process can easily be automated.

The first step is to enumerate the domain’s GPOs and their location.

$ ldeep ldap -u lowpriv -p [REDACTED] -d lab.local -s ldap://192.168.90.212 search "(objectCategory=groupPolicyContainer)" displayname,gPCFileSysPath
[{
"displayName": "LocalPrivileges",
"dn": "CN={61BAD2C5-75EE-425F-A839-7F2C73F9026C},CN=Policies,CN=System,DC=lab,DC=local",
"gPCFileSysPath": "\\\\lab.local\\SysVol\\lab.local\\Policies\\{61BAD2C5-75EE-425F-A839-7F2C73F9026C}"
},
{
"displayName": "Default Domain Controllers Policy",
"dn": "CN={6AC1786C-016F-11D2-945F-00C04fB984F9},CN=Policies,CN=System,DC=lab,DC=local",
"gPCFileSysPath": "\\\\lab.local\\sysvol\\lab.local\\Policies\\{6AC1786C-016F-11D2-945F-00C04fB984F9}"
},
{
"displayName": "Default Domain Policy",
"dn": "CN={31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9},CN=Policies,CN=System,DC=lab,DC=local",
"gPCFileSysPath": "\\\\lab.local\\sysvol\\lab.local\\Policies\\{31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}"
}]

Once the base location of GPOs is known, it is possible to query each GPO GptTmpl.inf file and check if some privileges are defined within. This file is located in the \\dc01.lab.local\SYSVOL\lab.local\Policies\{61BAD2C5-75EE-425F-A839-7F2C73F9026C}\MACHINE\Microsoft\Windows NT\SecEdit folder.

$ smbclient.py lab.local/lowpriv:[REDACTED]@192.168.90.212
# cd lab.local\Policies\{61BAD2C5-75EE-425F-A839-7F2C73F9026C}\MACHINE\Microsoft\Windows NT\SecEdit\
# cat GptTmpl.inf
[Unicode]
Unicode=yes
[Registry Values]
MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTDS\Parameters\LDAPServerIntegrity=4,1
MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters\RequireSignOrSeal=4,1
MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters\RequireSecuritySignature=4,1
MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters\EnableSecuritySignature=4,1
[Privilege Rights]
SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege = *S-1-5-20,*S-1-5-19
SeAuditPrivilege = *S-1-5-20,*S-1-5-19
SeBackupPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-551,*S-1-5-32-544
SeBatchLogonRight = *S-1-5-32-559,*S-1-5-32-551,*S-1-5-32-544
SeChangeNotifyPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-554,*S-1-5-11,*S-1-5-32-544,*S-1-5-20,*S-1-5-19,*S-1-1-0
SeCreatePagefilePrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
SeDebugPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
SeIncreaseBasePriorityPrivilege = *S-1-5-90-0,*S-1-5-32-544
SeIncreaseQuotaPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544,*S-1-5-20,*S-1-5-19
SeInteractiveLogonRight = *S-1-5-9,*S-1-5-32-550,*S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-548,*S-1-5-32-551,*S-1-5-32-544
SeLoadDriverPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-550,*S-1-5-32-544
SeMachineAccountPrivilege = *S-1-5-11
SeNetworkLogonRight = *S-1-5-32-554,*S-1-5-9,*S-1-5-11,*S-1-5-32-544,*S-1-1-0
SeProfileSingleProcessPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-544
SeRestorePrivilege = *S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-551,*S-1-5-32-544
SeSecurityPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
SeShutdownPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-550,*S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-551,*S-1-5-32-544
SeSystemEnvironmentPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
SeSystemProfilePrivilege = *S-1-5-80-3139157870-2983391045-3678747466-658725712-1809340420,*S-1-5-32-544
SeSystemTimePrivilege = *S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-544,*S-1-5-19
SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
SeUndockPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
SeEnableDelegationPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544
[Version]
signature="$CHICAGO$"
Revision=1

As you can see the LocalPrivileges GPO has a GptTmpl.inf file, this might not be the case of all GPOs. This file is a Security Configuration File and so is composed of sections and key pairs. The sections defined within this file may vary but in the context of this article, only the Privilege Rights section is interesting and is self-explanatory: privilege names are mapped to a comma separated list of Security Identifiers (SIDs).

The next step is to query Organizational Units’ gPLink property to know to which OUs are the GPOs mapped to.

$ ldeep ldap -u lowpriv -p [REDACTED] -d lab.local -s ldap://192.168.90.212 search "(&(objectCategory=organizationalUnit)(gPLink=*))" gPLink
[{
"dn": "OU=AmazingComputers,DC=lab,DC=local",
"gPLink": "[LDAP://cn={61BAD2C5-75EE-425F-A839-7F2C73F9026C},cn=policies,cn=system,DC=lab,DC=local;0]"
},
{
"dn": "OU=Domain Controllers,DC=lab,DC=local",
"gPLink": "[LDAP://CN={6AC1786C-016F-11D2-945F-00C04fB984F9},CN=Policies,CN=System,DC=lab,DC=local;0]"
}]

In our case, we can see that the LocalPrivileges GPO is linked to the AmazingComputers Organizational Unit. Finally, we can list the computers of this OU:

$ ldeep ldap -u lowpriv -p [REDACTED] -d lab.local -s ldap://192.168.90.212 -b "OU=AmazingComputers,DC=lab,DC=local" search "(objectCategory=computer)" sAMAccountName
[{
"dn": "CN=SCCM,OU=AmazingComputers,DC=lab,DC=local",
"sAMAccountName": "SCCM$"
},
{
"dn": "CN=PKI,OU=AmazingComputers,DC=lab,DC=local",
"sAMAccountName": "PKI$"
}]

By iterating this process over all GPOs, we will be aware of the privileges applied to principals on machines.

Connect to each system remotely to map local privileges

The other reliable way to map local privileges is to connect directly to the machines and ask the LSA. This can be done through the following function over RPC:

NTSTATUS LsaEnumerateAccountsWithUserRight(
LSA_HANDLE          PolicyHandle,
PLSA_UNICODE_STRING UserRight,
PVOID               *Buffer,
PULONG              CountReturned
);

This function requires a handle onto a Local Security Policy object and will return users that have the queried privilege. Thus, to enumerate all users with local privileges on a machine you must loop through a list of privileges and call this function multiple times.

Manipulating privileges using BloodHound

Let us now see a real world example on how BloodHound can be used to enumerate privileges and then abuse them.

As can be seen below, the synacktiv user has the SeBackupPrivilege privilege and the CanRDP right on the PKI.LAB.LOCAL and SCCM.LAB.LOCAL machines. As the SeBackupPrivilege privilege allows its owner to read any file or hive from the registry, it can be exploited to gain administrative privileges on a machine by reading sensitive hives such as the SAM and SYSTEM hives. In our scenario, we will first access the machine using RDP and then perform a backup of the SAM and SYSTEM hives to get the local administrator’s NT hash.

‘Synacktiv’ user rights over lab machines

The first step is to connect to the machine using RDP:

RDP window to connect to PKI.LAB.LOCAL

Once this is done, launch an elevated PowerShell instance (otherwise your access token will not have SeBackupPrivilege).

Extracting sensitives hives from Windows

Then, transfer the hives to your attacker system and use secretsdumps.py to parse them:

Local secrets extraction from the SAM and SECURITY hives.

Conclusion

In this post, we explained the inner workings of Windows access tokens and explored how specific privileges fundamentally alter a user’s security context, allowing them to bypass traditional ACL restrictions.

On the other hand, logon rights can be equally useful to defenders. Indeed, by carefully controlling these, organizations can dramatically decrease the chances of an attacker’s pivoting through their internal Active Directory infrastructure. Our bloodhound Pull Request allows both attackers and defenders to identity local privilege escalation opportunities through Windows privileges and see the associated attack paths.