Query: Outbound C2 pattern associated with Bypass User Account Control
Matching passage: T1548.002 Bypass User Account Control. Tactics: privilege escalation. Description: Adversaries may bypass UAC mechanisms to elevate process privileges on system. Windows User Account Control (UAC) allows a program to elevate its privileges (tracked as integrity levels ranging from low to high) to perform a task under administrator-level permissions, possibly by prompting the user for confirmation. The impact to the user ranges from denying the operation under high enforcement to allowing the user to perform the action if they are in the local administrators group and click through the prompt or allowing them to enter an administrator password to complete the action.(Citation: TechNet How UAC Works) If the UAC protection level of a computer is set to anything but the highest level, certain Windows programs can elevate privileges or execute some elevated [Component Object Model](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1559/001) objects without prompting the user through the UAC notification box.(Citation: TechNet Inside UAC)(Citation: MSDN COM Elevation) An example of this is use of [Rundll32](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/011) to load a specifically crafted DLL which loads an auto-elevated [Component Object Model](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1559/001) object and performs a file operation in a protected directory which would typically require elevated access. Malicious software may also be injected into a trusted process to gain elevated privileges without prompting a user.(Citation: Davidson Windows) Many methods have been discovered to bypass UAC. The Github readme page for UACME contains an extensive list of methods(Citation: Github UACMe) that have been discovered and implemented, but may not be a comprehensive list of bypasses. Additional bypass methods are regularly discovered and some used in the wild, such as: * <code>eventvwr.exe</code> can auto-elevate and execute a specified binary or script.(Citation: enigma0x3 Fileless UAC Bypass)(Citation: Fortinet Fareit) Another bypass is possible through some lateral movement techn
Near-miss passage: T1548.005 Temporary Elevated Cloud Access. Tactics: privilege escalation. Description: Adversaries may abuse permission configurations that allow them to gain temporarily elevated access to cloud resources. Many cloud environments allow administrators to grant user or service accounts permission to request just-in-time access to roles, impersonate other accounts, pass roles onto resources and services, or otherwise gain short-term access to a set of privileges that may be distinct from their own. Just-in-time access is a mechanism for granting additional roles to cloud accounts in a granular, temporary manner. This allows accounts to operate with only the permissions they need on a daily basis, and to request additional permissions as necessary. Sometimes just-in-time access requests are configured to require manual approval, while other times the desired permissions are automatically granted.(Citation: Azure Just in Time Access 2023) Account impersonation allows user or service accounts to temporarily act with the permissions of another account. For example, in GCP users with the `iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator` role can create temporary access tokens or sign arbitrary payloads with the permissions of a service account, while service accounts with domain-wide delegation permission are permitted to impersonate Google Workspace accounts.(Citation: Google Cloud Service Account Authentication Roles)(Citation: Hunters Domain Wide Delegation Google Workspace 2023)(Citation: Google Cloud Just in Time Access 2023)(Citation: Palo Alto Unit 42 Google Workspace Domain Wide Delegation 2023) In Exchange Online, the `ApplicationImpersonation` role allows a service account to use the permissions associated with specified user accounts.(Citation: Microsoft Impersonation and EWS in Exchange) Many cloud environments also include mechanisms for users to pass roles to resources that allow them to perform tasks and authenticate to other services. While the user that creates the resource does not directly assume the role they pass to it, they may still be able to take adv