ESC9 - WIP
Document is work in progess and incomplete
Description
If the msPKI-Enrollment-Flag attribute of a certificate template includes the CT_FLAG_NO_SECURITY_EXTENSION value, the szOID_NTDS_CA_SECURITY_EXT extension will not be included in the issued certificates. As a result, regardless of how the StrongCertificateBindingEnforcement registry key is configured—even if it is set to its default value of 1—the certificate mapping process will behave as though the registry key is set to 0. This effectively bypasses strong certificate mapping, potentially weakening the security of certificate-based authentication.
What this means is that if we possess access to an account that has Write privileges to a user account, we can modify the target users User Principal Name (UPN), change it to that of another account we wish to compromise. Attack Overview
Modify UPN of Target Account (B):
If an attacker (Account A) has GenericWrite permissions on Account B, they can modify Account B's UPN to match that of a higher-privileged account (Account C).
Request Certificate for Account B:
The attacker then requests a certificate for Account B. Due to the modified UPN, the certificate will be issued with the identity of Account C.
Authenticate as Account C:
With the obtained certificate, the attacker can authenticate as Account C, effectively escalating their privileges.
This is not something generally configured within the template options itself but rather by an administrator with certutil.
Requirements for attack path
The StrongCertificateBindingEnforcement registry key should remain at its default value of 1 and should not be set to 2, or the CertificateMappingMethods must include the UPN flag (0x4).
The certificate template must have the
CT_FLAG_NO_SECURITY_EXTENSIONflag included in themsPKI-Enrollment-Flagattribute.Additionally, the certificate template must explicitly allow Client Authentication as one of its intended purposes.
For privilege escalation, an attacker must have at least GenericWrite permissions on a user account (Account A) to compromise another user account (Account B).
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