Query: intelligence brief on T1556.007
Matching passage: T1556.007 Hybrid Identity. Tactics: defense impairment, persistence, credential access. Description: Adversaries may patch, modify, or otherwise backdoor cloud authentication processes that are tied to on-premises user identities in order to bypass typical authentication mechanisms, access credentials, and enable persistent access to accounts. Many organizations maintain hybrid user and device identities that are shared between on-premises and cloud-based environments. These can be maintained in a number of ways. For example, Microsoft Entra ID includes three options for synchronizing identities between Active Directory and Entra ID(Citation: Azure AD Hybrid Identity): * Password Hash Synchronization (PHS), in which a privileged on-premises account synchronizes user password hashes between Active Directory and Entra ID, allowing authentication to Entra ID to take place entirely in the cloud * Pass Through Authentication (PTA), in which Entra ID authentication attempts are forwarded to an on-premises PTA agent, which validates the credentials against Active Directory * Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS), in which a trust relationship is established between Active Directory and Entra ID AD FS can also be used with other SaaS and cloud platforms such as AWS and GCP, which will hand off the authentication process to AD FS and receive a token containing the hybrid users’ identity and privileges. By modifying authentication processes tied to hybrid identities, an adversary may be able to establish persistent privileged access to cloud resources. For example, adversaries who compromise an on-premises server running a PTA agent may inject a malicious DLL into the `AzureADConnectAuthenticationAgentService` process that authorizes all attempts to authenticate to Entra ID, as well as records user credentials.(Citation: Azure AD Connect for Read Teamers)(Citation: AADInternals Azure AD On-Prem to Cloud) In environments using AD FS, an adversary may edit the `Microsoft.IdentityServer.Servicehost` configuration file to load a malicious DLL that generates authentication
Near-miss passage: T1556.009 Conditional Access Policies. Tactics: defense impairment, persistence, credential access. Description: Adversaries may disable or modify conditional access policies to enable persistent access to compromised accounts. Conditional access policies are additional verifications used by identity providers and identity and access management systems to determine whether a user should be granted access to a resource. For example, in Entra ID, Okta, and JumpCloud, users can be denied access to applications based on their IP address, device enrollment status, and use of multi-factor authentication.(Citation: Microsoft Conditional Access)(Citation: JumpCloud Conditional Access Policies)(Citation: Okta Conditional Access Policies) In some cases, identity providers may also support the use of risk-based metrics to deny sign-ins based on a variety of indicators. In AWS and GCP, IAM policies can contain `condition` attributes that verify arbitrary constraints such as the source IP, the date the request was made, and the nature of the resources or regions being requested.(Citation: AWS IAM Conditions)(Citation: GCP IAM Conditions) These measures help to prevent compromised credentials from resulting in unauthorized access to data or resources, as well as limit user permissions to only those required. By modifying conditional access policies, such as adding additional trusted IP ranges, removing [Multi-Factor Authentication](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1556/006) requirements, or allowing additional [Unused/Unsupported Cloud Regions](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1535), adversaries may be able to ensure persistent access to accounts and circumvent defensive measures.