Identify suspicious activities and advanced attacks across the cyber-attack kill-chain using Microsoft Defender for identity

Brute force attacks are a common way to compromise credentials. This is when an attacker attempts to authenticate with multiple passwords on different accounts until a correct password is found or by using one password in a large-scale password spray that works for at least one account. Once found, the attacker logs in using the authenticated account.

Typically, attacks are launched against any accessible entity, such as a low-privileged user, and then quickly move laterally until the attacker gains access to valuable assets – such as sensitive accounts, domain administrators, and highly sensitive data. Microsoft Defender for Identity has a large range of detections across the Kill-chain from reconnaissance through to compromised credentials to lateral movements and domain dominance.

For example, in the reconnaissance stage, LDAP reconnaissance is used by attackers to gain critical information about the domain environment. Information that helps attackers map the domain structure, and identify privileged accounts for use later. This detection is triggered based on computers performing suspicious LDAP enumeration queries or queries targeting sensitive groups.

Brute force attacks are a common way to compromise credentials. This is when an attacker attempts to authenticate with multiple passwords on different accounts until a correct password is found or by using one password in a large-scale password spray that works for at least one account. Once found, the attacker logs in using the authenticated account. Microsoft Defender for Identity can detect this when it notices multiple authentication failures occurring using Kerberos, NTLM, or use of a password spray.

The next stage is when attackers attempt to move laterally through your environment, using pass-the-ticket, for example. Pass-the-ticket is a lateral movement technique in which attackers steal a Kerberos ticket from one computer and use it to gain access to another computer by reusing the stolen ticket. In this detection, a Kerberos ticket is being used on two (or more) different computers.

Ultimately, attackers want to establish domain dominance. One method, for example is the DCShadow attack. This attack is designed to change directory objects using malicious replication. This attack can be performed from any machine by creating a rogue domain controller using a replication process. If this occurs, Microsoft Defender for Identity triggers an alert when a machine in the network tries to register as a rogue domain controller.

This is not the complete set of detections, but it shows the breadth of detections Microsoft Defender for Identity covers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

en_USEnglish