MITRE ATT&CK  /  T1556.007

T1556.007

Hybrid Identity

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 IDAD 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, ad…

Platforms

Mitigations

• M1032 — Multi-factor Authentication
• M1047 — Audit
• M1026 — Privileged Account Management

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