352. That's How Ink Dragon Downgrades Security Controls

Hello everyone!

Today we'll look at a few more examples of how adversaries intentionally weaken Windows security posture to assist persistence and lateral movement.

According to the report, Ink Dragon modified various Windows registry settings to downgrade security controls: enabled restricted admin (DisableRestrictedAdmin), disabled remote token filtering (LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy), enabled the DSRM (Directory Services Restore Mode) Administrator account (DsrmAdminLogonBehavior), and removed Process Protection Level safeguards (RunAsPPL).

These behaviors are definitely good target for hunting, for example:

event_type: "registryvaluesetwin"

AND

reg_key_path: "localaccounttokenfilterpolicy"

AND

reg_value_data: "0x00000001"

See you tomorrow!


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