The compromise of a single Active Directory credential can lead to unauthorized access to your servers, applications, virtualization platforms and user files across your enterprise. One of the reasons for credential vulnerability is that Windows stores credentials in the Local Security Authority (LSA), which is a process in memory.

If your company is like many others, it probably invested heavily in the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft has been around since the 1980s, focusing primarily on business technologies. It has a reputation for compatibility which gives you more purchasing options across devices and accessories. Unfortunately, this reach across corporate IT environments means that malicious actors target everything associated with Microsoft.

The Windows Registry is one of the most powerful Windows operating system features that can tweak or manipulate Windows policies and low-level configuration settings. Because of this capability, most malware or adversaries abuse this hierarchical database to perform malicious tasks on a victim host or environment. Over the last 2 years, the Splunk Threat Research Team has analyzed and reverse engineered some of the most prevalent and successful malware families.

MITRE ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) is a comprehensive knowledge base of tactics, techniques and procedures that adversaries use to conduct cyber-attacks. The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a globally-accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations.

Audit Policy: Object Access: SAM is a setting in the Windows operating system that controls the auditing of security events related to access to the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) database. The SAM database is used to store user account information, including login credentials, on a Windows system. When the setting is enabled, the system will generate an audit event in the security log of the event viewer every time an attempt is made to access the SAM database.

Audit Policy: Object Access: Certification Services” is a setting in the Windows operating system that controls whether or not the system generates audit events when a certificate is requested or used for authentication purposes.

Audit Policy: Object Access: File System is a setting in the Microsoft Windows operating system that determines whether the system generates audit events when certain actions are taken on files and directories stored on the file system. When this setting is enabled, the system will log events such as when a file or directory is read, written to, or deleted. This can be useful for tracking changes to sensitive files or for troubleshooting issues with file access.