Windows Cached Domain Credentials Reg Query

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Description

The following analytic identifies a process command line related to the discovery of cache domain credential logon count in the registry. This Technique was being abused by several post exploitation tool like Winpeas where it query CachedLogonsCount registry value in Winlogon registry. This value can be good information about the login caching setting on the Windows OS target host. A value of 0 means login caching is disable and values > 50 caches only 50 login attempts. By default all versions of Windows 10 save cached logins except Windows Server 2008.

• Type: Anomaly
• Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
• Datamodel: Endpoint
• Last Updated: 2022-11-30
• Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
• ID: 40ccb8e0-1785-466e-901e-6a8b75c04ecd

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1003.005	Cached Domain Credentials	Credential Access

T1003

OS Credential Dumping

Credential Access

Kill Chain Phase

• Exploitation

NIST

• DE.AE

CIS20

• CIS 10

CVE

Search

| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where  `process_reg` AND Processes.process = "* query *" AND Processes.process = "*\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Winlogon*" AND Processes.process = "*CACHEDLOGONSCOUNT*" by Processes.process_name Processes.original_file_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.process_guid Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_guid Processes.dest Processes.user 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_cached_domain_credentials_reg_query_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

• security_content_ctime
• process_reg
• security_content_summariesonly

windows_cached_domain_credentials_reg_query_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Required fields

List of fields required to use this analytic.

• _time
• Processes.dest
• Processes.user
• Processes.parent_process_name
• Processes.parent_process
• Processes.original_file_name
• Processes.process_name
• Processes.process
• Processes.process_id
• Processes.parent_process_path
• Processes.process_path
• Processes.parent_process_id
• Processes.parent_process_guid
• Processes.process_guid

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the process name, parent process, and command-line executions from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you must have at least version 6.0.4 of the Sysmon TA. Tune and filter known instances of wermgr.exe may be used.

Known False Positives

unknown

Associated Analytic Story

• Windows Post-Exploitation
• Prestige Ransomware

RBA

Risk Score	Impact	Confidence	Message
9.0	30	30	a process with commandline $process$ tries to retrieve cache domain credential logon count in $dest$

The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

Reference

• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2022/10/14/new-prestige-ransomware-impacts-organizations-in-ukraine-and-poland/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/de-de/troubleshoot/windows-server/user-profiles-and-logon/cached-domain-logon-information
• https://github.com/carlospolop/PEASS-ng/tree/master/winPEAS

Test Dataset

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

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