Do’s and don’ts concerning security for Identity part 2

Continuing with the do’s of Identity and supposing that you have a Hybrid identity setup.

If you still need (haven’t convinced you otherwise) federation services in on-premises, use should use

Table of Contents

Defender for Identity sensors for ADFS

What it needs?

ADFS in Windows Server 2016 and up that isn’t an Domain controller

You to open port 443 in your firewalls and proxies to <your-instance>sensorapi.atp.azure.com

Allow the Directory service account that you specify in (Configuration > Directory services > Username) have access to AdfsConfiguration database.

The account types

Type of DSA	Pros	Cons
gMSA	More secure deployment since Active Directory manages the creation and rotation of the account’s password like a computer account’s password.You can control how often the account’s password is changed.	Requires additional setup steps.
Regular user account	Supports all operating system versions the sensor supports.Easy to create and start working with.Easy to configure read permissions between trusted forests.	Less secure since it requires the creation and management of passwords.Can lead to downtime if the password expires and password isn’t updated (both at the user and DSA configuration).

Adding user account to the database with PowerShell when you internal SQL Express DB.

$ConnectionString = 'server=\\.\pipe\MICROSOFT##WID\tsql\query;database=AdfsConfigurationV4;trusted_connection=true;'
$SQLConnection= New-Object System.Data.SQLClient.SQLConnection($ConnectionString)
$SQLConnection.Open()
$SQLCommand = $SQLConnection.CreateCommand()
$SQLCommand.CommandText = @"
USE [master]; 
CREATE LOGIN [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount] FROM WINDOWS WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master];
USE [AdfsConfigurationV4]; 
CREATE USER [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount] FOR LOGIN [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount]; 
ALTER ROLE [db_datareader] ADD MEMBER [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount]; 
GRANT CONNECT TO [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount]; 
GRANT SELECT TO [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount];
"@
$SqlDataReader = $SQLCommand.ExecuteReader()
$SQLConnection.Close()

$ConnectionString = 'server=\\.\pipe\MICROSOFT##WID\tsql\query;database=AdfsConfigurationV4;trusted_connection=true;'

$SQLConnection= New-Object System.Data.SQLClient.SQLConnection($ConnectionString)

$SQLConnection.Open()

$SQLCommand = $SQLConnection.CreateCommand()

$SQLCommand.CommandText = @"

USE [master];

CREATE LOGIN [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount] FROM WINDOWS WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master];

USE [AdfsConfigurationV4];

CREATE USER [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount] FOR LOGIN [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount];

ALTER ROLE [db_datareader] ADD MEMBER [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount];

GRANT CONNECT TO [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount];

GRANT SELECT TO [DOMAIN1\ServiceAccount];

$SqlDataReader = $SQLCommand.ExecuteReader()

$SQLConnection.Close()

Setting ADFS logging to verbose with

Set-AdfsProperties -AuditLevel Verbose

1	Set-AdfsProperties -AuditLevel Verbose

And then the agent install from here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-for-identity/install-step3#download-the-setup-package

Read this excellent post from Jeffrey Appel about MDI and how set it up!

How to implement Defender for Identity and configure all prerequisites

Microsoft Defender for Identity MDI (previously called Azure Advanced Threat Protection or Azure ATP) is a Microsoft security solution that captures signals from Domain Controllers. MDI is a cloud-based security solution that leverages on-premises Active Directory signals for detecting identity atta…

What it can do?

It will detect on-premises attacks against AD FS servers and report the information back to Defender for Identity.

Find Honeypot’s from your environment and how they are used for possible lateral movement. Here is an excellent blog about the pots.

Creating a Honeytoken User in Office 365

🕵🏻‍♀ v️🕵🏻‍♂: As part of my current project to harden Office 365, I have proposed to my partner in “Don’t Do” Crimes that we should conduct some phishing and other fun little war games to work out h…

What it will find?

It will find the following reconnaissance information

LDAP enumeration
Group membership enumeration
Users and IP enumeration
DNS enumeration
Suspicious resources access activities
Reconnaissance by targeted entity attributes

And the following credential access

Brute force attacks (ADDS & ADFS)
Login/failed suspicious activities
Suspicious DC password changes using different services
Suspicious Kerberos SPN exposure
Honeytoken account activities
Suspicious VPN activities

And there lateral movements

Pass-the-ticket attack
Pass-the-hash attack
NTLM relay and NTLM tampering
Overpass-the-hash
Suspicious certificates
Suspicious group membership changes
Suspicious SID history injection

In example you can protect you self from attacks like Nobelium

MagicWeb: NOBELIUM’s post-compromise trick to authenticate as anyone – Microsoft Security Blog

Microsoft security researchers have discovered a post-compromise capability we’re calling MagicWeb, which is used by a threat actor we track as NOBELIUM to maintain persistent access to compromised environments.

If you install both Defender for Identity and the Defender for Endpoint sensors, you can protect ADFS and the server itself.

Defender for Endpoint

To try out Defender for Endpoint, enable your trial here https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=2168109

Defender for Endpoint plans

Plan	What’s included
Defender for Endpoint Plan 1	Next-generation protection (includes antimalware and antivirus)Attack surface reduction Manual response actions Centralized management Security reports APIs Support for Windows 10, iOS, Android OS, and macOS devices
Defender for Endpoint Plan 2	All of the Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 capabilities, plus:Device discovery Device inventory Core Defender Vulnerability Management capabilities Threat Analytics Automated investigation and response Advanced hunting Endpoint detection and response Microsoft Threat ExpertsSupport for Windows (client and server) and non-Windows platforms (macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux)

With Defender For Endpoint you can detect threat like.

HAFNIUM targeting Exchange Servers with 0-day exploits – Microsoft Security Blog

Microsoft has detected multiple 0-day exploits being used to attack on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in limited and targeted attacks. In the attacks observed, threat actors used this vulnerability to access on-premises Exchange servers, which enabled access to email accounts, and in…

GALLIUM: Targeting global telecom

Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is raising awareness of the ongoing activity by a group we call GALLIUM, targeting telecommunication providers.

And also dumping, like Living Off The Land Binaries.

Living off-the-land binaries, or “LOLBins,” are not inherently dangerous, but when they are used by cybercriminals to their advantage, they can cause serious damage to your computers. Local tools that come with your operating system are called LOLBins. Some highest used examples of these are PowerShell.exe, rundll32.exe and Certutil.exe

LOLBAS/README.md at master · LOLBAS-Project/LOLBAS

Living Off The Land Binaries And Scripts – (LOLBins and LOLScripts) – LOLBAS/README.md at master · LOLBAS-Project/LOLBAS

Detecting and preventing LSASS credential dumping attacks – Microsoft Security Blog

LSASS credential dumping is becoming prevalent, especially with the rise of human-operated ransomware. In May 2022, Microsoft participated in an evaluation conducted by AV-Comparatives specifically on detecting and blocking this attack technique and we’re happy to report that Microsoft Defender for…

But an better solution could be switching from on-premises ADFS to…

Certificate-based authentication

Customers can directly authenticate against Azure AD using certificate-based authentication. Federated AD FS is necessarily no longer required thanks to Azure AD CBA, which simplifies customer environments and lowers costs.

And CBA is now globally available! You can read more from the feature inside my previous post.

Certificate-based authentication is generally available!

Microsoft announced today at Ignite 2022 that Certificate-Based Authentication is officially out of preview and ready to use! Why CBA was created? “In May of 2021, the President issued Executive Order 14028, Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity calling for the Federal Government to modernize and adopt a Zero Trust architecture including phish resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) for employees, business […]

Authentication context

ASP.NET

Auth context also went GA at Ignite, it can be used inside ASP.NET CORE application to force phishing resistant authentication

Force phishing resistant authentication in an ASP.NET Core application using Azure AD

This article shows how to force a phishing resistant authentication for an ASP.NET Core application using Azure AD and a conditional access policy which forces a phishing resistant authentication u…

Native applications

Or inside application it supports in example these applications can be like SharePoint, or applications protected by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.

Cloud apps, actions, and authentication context in Conditional Access policy – Azure Active Directory – Microsoft Entra

What are cloud apps, actions, and authentication context in an Azure AD Conditional Access policy

Templates to educate users

You can use Microsoft Entra end-user rollout templates and materials (Customizable posters, training, stickers, and email templates) to roll out Azure Active Directory features in your organization

These are just brilliant, I really should try them out when taking security features in use!

You download here the templates that Martin Coetzer’s team has made for your disposal.

Download Microsoft Entra end-user rollout templates and materials from Official Microsoft Download Center

Use these customizable posters, training, stickers, and email templates to roll out Azure Active Directory features in your organization

Use AAD Connect Cloud Sync (if able to)

Those of you that use Azure AD password reset and Azure AD Connect, should really consider switching to Azure Active Directory Connect cloud sync to keep your password up to date in real-time.

Enable Azure Active Directory Connect cloud sync password writeback – Microsoft Entra

In this tutorial, you learn how to enable Azure AD self-service password reset writeback using Azure AD Connect cloud sync to synchronize changes back to an on-premises Active Directory Domain Services environment.

Benefits

A SQL (Express) database on your server is not necessary.
You can build high availability by setting up several agents without configuring inbound ports or load balancers.
Agents will upgrade automatically on the background.
Sync logs from the Azure portal is provided.
Azure makes it simple to force synchronization and by default cloud provisioning occurs every 2 minutes.
Up to 50.000 users can sync together in a single group.

Customizing sync

Inside AAD Connect you had Metaverse which had all the user attributes from AD and Azure AD inside an SQL DB.

You could do queries on them and custom rules based on different factors.

Azure AD Connect sync: Make a change to the default configuration – Microsoft Entra

Walks you through how to make a change to the configuration in Azure AD Connect sync.

Cloud sync user a little bit different methods because there is no local components except the light-weight proxy-based agent.

It create an App registration that the agent will contact eventually and through that API it will do it’s magic but keep this in mind.

Once you create the config and give it a name, that will become the App registration name

Under App registrations

If we look at manifest a bit.

It has access with the agent and the gMSA account create for it to your local AD.

And the following App roles

Here is instructions on how to modify or query the schema with Microsoft Graph.

Azure AD Connect cloud sync transformations – Microsoft Entra

This article describes how to use transformations to alter the default attribute mappings.

You can either update with Graph or download the rules and edit them in VS Code or similar editor and Put them back to the schema once done.

Supported scenarios

Azure AD Connect cloud sync supported topologies and scenarios – Microsoft Entra

Learn about various on-premises and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) topologies that use Azure AD Connect cloud sync.

Limitations

Directory extension attributes from AD are not synced.
Pass-Through Authentication (PTA) is not supported by Cloud Sync.
Hybrid Exchange Deployment is not supported by Cloud Sync.
Device and group writeback is not supported by cloud sync

Closure

In this part we discovered how MDI and MDE works but also about CBA and Cloud sync and why they are useful for your environment.

In the next part more Identity do’s and don’ts, Stay tuned!

Hackers don’t break in – they log in.

Do’s and don’ts concerning security for Identity part 2