OS Credential Dumping: Security Account Manager

Agrius dumped the SAM file on victim machines to capture credentials.^[2]

APT29 has used the reg save command to save registry hives.^[3]

APT41 extracted user account data from the Security Account Managerr (SAM), making a copy of this database from the registry using the reg save command or by exploiting volume shadow copies.^[4]

APT5 has copied and exfiltrated the SAM Registry hive from targeted systems.^[5]

During C0017, APT41 copied the SAM and SYSTEM Registry hives for credential harvesting.^[6]

Cobalt Strike can recover hashed passwords.^[7]

CosmicDuke collects Windows account hashes.^[8]

Password stealer and NTLM stealer modules in CozyCar harvest stored credentials from the victim, including credentials used as part of Windows NTLM user authentication.^[9]

CrackMapExec can dump usernames and hashed passwords from the SAM.^[10]

Daggerfly used Reg to dump the Security Account Manager (SAM) hive from victim machines for follow-on credential extraction.^[11]

Dragonfly has dropped and executed SecretsDump to dump password hashes.^[12]

Ember Bear acquires victim credentials by extracting registry hives such as the Security Account Manager through commands such as reg save.^[13][14]

Fgdump can dump Windows password hashes.^[15]

FIN13 has extracted the SAM and SYSTEM registry hives using the reg.exe binary for obtaining password hashes from a compromised machine.^[16]

GALLIUM used reg commands to dump specific hives from the Windows Registry, such as the SAM hive, and obtain password hashes.^[17]

gsecdump can dump Windows password hashes from the SAM.^[18]

HOPLIGHT has the capability to harvest credentials and passwords from the SAM database.^[19]

IceApple's Credential Dumper module can dump encrypted password hashes from SAM registry keys, including HKLM\SAM\SAM\Domains\Account\F and HKLM\SAM\SAM\Domains\Account\Users\*\V.^[20]

SecretsDump and Mimikatz modules within Impacket can perform credential dumping to obtain account and password information.^[21]

Ke3chang has dumped credentials, including by using gsecdump.^[22][23]

Koadic can gather hashed passwords by dumping SAM/SECURITY hive.^[24]

menuPass has used a modified version of pentesting tools wmiexec.vbs and secretsdump.py to dump credentials.^[25][26]

Mimikatz performs credential dumping to obtain account and password information useful in gaining access to additional systems and enterprise network resources. It contains functionality to acquire information about credentials in many ways, including from the SAM table.^{[27][28][29][30]}

Mivast has the capability to gather NTLM password information.^[31]

During Night Dragon, threat actors dumped account hashes using gsecdump.^[32]

During Operation CuckooBees, the threat actors leveraged a custom tool to dump OS credentials and used following commands: reg save HKLM\\SYSTEM system.hiv, reg save HKLM\\SAM sam.hiv, and reg save HKLM\\SECURITY security.hiv, to dump SAM, SYSTEM and SECURITY hives.^[33]

POWERTON has the ability to dump password hashes.^[34]

pwdump can be used to dump credentials from the SAM.^[35]

Remsec can dump the SAM database.^[36]

Threat Group-3390 actors have used gsecdump to dump credentials. They have also dumped credentials from domain controllers.^[37][38]

Wizard Spider has acquired credentials from the SAM/SECURITY registry hives.^[39]

Consider disabling or restricting NTLM.^[40]

Ensure that local administrator accounts have complex, unique passwords across all systems on the network.

Do not put user or admin domain accounts in the local administrator groups across systems unless they are tightly controlled, as this is often equivalent to having a local administrator account with the same password on all systems. Follow best practices for design and administration of an enterprise network to limit privileged account use across administrative tiers.

Limit credential overlap across accounts and systems by training users and administrators not to use the same password for multiple accounts.