T1550.003: Pass the Ticket

Adversaries may “pass the ticket” using stolen Kerberos tickets to move laterally within an environment, bypassing normal system access controls. Pass the ticket (PtT) is a method of authenticating to a system using Kerberos tickets without having access to an account's password. Kerberos authentication can be used as the first step to lateral movement to a remote system.

When preforming PtT, valid Kerberos tickets for Valid Accounts are captured by OS Credential Dumping. A user's service tickets or ticket granting ticket (TGT) may be obtained, depending on the level of access. A service ticket allows for access to a particular resource, whereas a TGT can be used to request service tickets from the Ticket Granting Service (TGS) to access any resource the user has privileges to access.

A Silver Ticket can be obtained for services that use Kerberos as an authentication mechanism and are used to generate tickets to access that particular resource and the system that hosts the resource (e.g., SharePoint).

A Golden Ticket can be obtained for the domain using the Key Distribution Service account KRBTGT account NTLM hash, which enables generation of TGTs for any account in Active Directory.

Adversaries may also create a valid Kerberos ticket using other user information, such as stolen password hashes or AES keys. For example, "overpassing the hash" involves using a NTLM password hash to authenticate as a user (i.e. Pass the Hash) while also using the password hash to create a valid Kerberos ticket.

Positive Technologies products that cover the technique

MaxPatrol SIEM knowledge base

mitre_attck_lateral_movement: PT-CR-1094: KRB_Relay_Auth_MITM6: Login via Kerberos from the host from which DNS spoofing was carried out is detected

Detection

ID	DS0026	Data source and component	Active Directory: Active Directory Credential Request	Description	Monitor requests of new ticket granting ticket or service tickets to a Domain Controller. Event ID 4769 is generated on the Domain Controller when using a golden ticket after the KRBTGT password has been reset twice, as mentioned in the mitigation section. The status code 0x1F indicates the action has failed due to "Integrity check on decrypted field failed" and indicates misuse by a previously invalidated golden ticket.

ID	DS0002	Data source and component	User Account: User Account Authentication	Description	Audit all Kerberos authentication and credential use events and review for discrepancies. Unusual remote authentication events that correlate with other suspicious activity (such as writing and executing binaries) may indicate malicious activity.

ID	DS0028	Data source and component	Logon Session: Logon Session Creation	Description	Monitor for newly constructed logon behavior that may “pass the ticket” using stolen Kerberos tickets to move laterally within an environment, bypassing normal system access controls.

ID	Data source and component	Description
DS0026	Active Directory: Active Directory Credential Request	Monitor requests of new ticket granting ticket or service tickets to a Domain Controller. Event ID 4769 is generated on the Domain Controller when using a golden ticket after the KRBTGT password has been reset twice, as mentioned in the mitigation section. The status code 0x1F indicates the action has failed due to "Integrity check on decrypted field failed" and indicates misuse by a previously invalidated golden ticket.
DS0002	User Account: User Account Authentication	Audit all Kerberos authentication and credential use events and review for discrepancies. Unusual remote authentication events that correlate with other suspicious activity (such as writing and executing binaries) may indicate malicious activity.
DS0028	Logon Session: Logon Session Creation	Monitor for newly constructed logon behavior that may “pass the ticket” using stolen Kerberos tickets to move laterally within an environment, bypassing normal system access controls.

Mitigation

ID	M1018	Name	User Account Management	Description	Do not allow a user to be a local administrator for multiple systems.

ID	M1026	Name	Privileged Account Management	Description	Limit domain admin account permissions to domain controllers and limited servers. Delegate other admin functions to separate accounts.

ID	M1027	Name	Password Policies	Description	Ensure that local administrator accounts have complex, unique passwords.

ID	M1015	Name	Active Directory Configuration	Description	To contain the impact of a previously generated golden ticket, reset the built-in KRBTGT account password twice, which will invalidate any existing golden tickets that have been created with the KRBTGT hash and other Kerberos tickets derived from it. For each domain, change the KRBTGT account password once, force replication, and then change the password a second time. Consider rotating the KRBTGT account password every 180 days.

ID	Name	Description
M1018	User Account Management	Do not allow a user to be a local administrator for multiple systems.
M1026	Privileged Account Management	Limit domain admin account permissions to domain controllers and limited servers. Delegate other admin functions to separate accounts.
M1027	Password Policies	Ensure that local administrator accounts have complex, unique passwords.
M1015	Active Directory Configuration	To contain the impact of a previously generated golden ticket, reset the built-in KRBTGT account password twice, which will invalidate any existing golden tickets that have been created with the KRBTGT hash and other Kerberos tickets derived from it. For each domain, change the KRBTGT account password once, force replication, and then change the password a second time. Consider rotating the KRBTGT account password every 180 days.