T1134.003

Make and Impersonate Token

SUB-TECHNIQUE Stealth Privilege Escalation

Description

Adversaries may make new tokens and impersonate users to escalate privileges and bypass access controls. For example, if an adversary has a username and password but the user is not logged onto the system the adversary can then create a logon session for the user using the `LogonUser` function.(Citation: LogonUserW function) The function will return a copy of the new session's access token and the adversary can use `SetThreadToken` to assign the token to a thread.This behavior is distinct from [Token Impersonation/Theft](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1134/001) in that this refers to creating a new user token instead of stealing or duplicating an existing one.

Platforms

Windows

Mitigations

M1026 — Privileged Account Management
M1018 — User Account Management

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Source: MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise matrix. View on attack.mitre.org →