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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.(Citation: ADSecurity AD Kerberos Attacks)(Citation: GentilKiwi Pass the Ticket)

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).(Citation: ADSecurity AD Kerberos Attacks)

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.(Citation: Campbell 2014)

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.(Citation: Stealthbits Overpass-the-Hash)

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CRI Profile Mappings

Capability ID Capability Description Mapping Type ATT&CK ID ATT&CK Name Notes
PR.AA-05.02 Privileged system access Mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
Comments
This diagnostic statement protects against Pass the Ticket through the use of privileged account management and the use of multi-factor authentication.
References
    DE.CM-06.02 Third-party access monitoring Mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
    Comments
    This diagnostic statement protects against Pass the Ticket through the use of privileged account management. Employing auditing, privilege access management, and just in time access protects against adversaries trying to obtain illicit access to critical systems.
    References
      PR.DS-02.01 Data-in-transit protection Mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
      Comments
      This diagnostic statement provide protection from adversaries that may possibly use stolen Kerberos tickets. Various methods should be used to protect data-in-transit including encryption, password hashing, and tokenization.
      References
        PR.IR-01.06 Production environment segregation Mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
        Comments
        This diagnostic statement provides protections for production environments. Measures such as network segmentation and access control reduce the attack surface, restrict movement by adversaries, and protect critical assets and data from compromise.
        References
          PR.AA-01.01 Identity and credential management Mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
          Comments
          This diagnostic statement protects against Pass the Ticket through the use of hardened access control policies, secure defaults, password complexity requirements, multifactor authentication requirements, and removal of terminated accounts.
          References

            NIST 800-53 Mappings

            Capability ID Capability Description Mapping Type ATT&CK ID ATT&CK Name Notes
            CA-07 Continuous Monitoring mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            CM-06 Configuration Settings mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            CM-05 Access Restrictions for Change mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            IA-05 Authenticator Management mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            CM-02 Baseline Configuration mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            IA-02 Identification and Authentication (Organizational Users) mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            SI-04 System Monitoring mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            AC-02 Account Management mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            AC-03 Access Enforcement mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            AC-05 Separation of Duties mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket
            AC-06 Least Privilege mitigates T1550.003 Pass the Ticket

            VERIS Mappings

            Capability ID Capability Description Mapping Type ATT&CK ID ATT&CK Name Notes
            action.hacking.variety.Use of stolen creds Use of stolen or default authentication credentials (including credential stuffing) related-to T1550.003 Pass the Ticket