Skip to content
PwnDefend
  • Base
  • Comms Room
    • Customer Feedback
    • Company Information
    • Security Management
  • Services
    • Consulting Services
      • Enterprise Security Posture Assessment
      • Cyber Security Assurance & Security Testing Services
      • IT Security Healthchecks
      • Active Directory Assessment Services
      • Managed Remediation Services
    • Emergency Cyber Incident Response Support
    • Our Success Stories
    • Partner Services
  • Blog
  • Privacy
Education

Cyber Security for PC Gamers

Introduction

The other day there was a lot of focus on “ATLASOS” a rather oddly branded project, just to be clear:

ATLASOS is NOT AN Operating System (OS) (despite it’s name!)

ATLASOS (at the time of writing) disables basically the majority of Windows Security features including:

  • Defender
  • Smart Screen
  • Windows Update
  • Spectre/Meltdown Mitigations

Basically, if you can think of “nightmare” in the cyber world, ATLASOS’s security posture is basically that (in my opinion)! That said, it’s cool from a nerd Windows customization/build pov, however based on my initial investigations I would strong recommend NOT using it on a “PRODUCTION” system (or anything that’s connected to the internet!).

Read more “Cyber Security for PC Gamers” →
Education

Active Directory Attacks – “It’s cold out here”

Scenario

In this scenario it is assumed you do not have credentials, but you do have either adjacent or routable access to an Active Directory Domain Controller and can access common ports/services such as: LDAP, LDAPS, SMB, NETBIOS, KERBEROS, DNS

Read more “Active Directory Attacks – “It’s cold out here”” →
Hacking

Active Directory Security Cheat Sheet

Ok you need to do some AD Security Auditing or Security Testing/Exploitation, great. Let’s look at some of the common misconfigurations and some tools to help you, a list of things will obviously not be the answer, you will need a method and process to go through from recon/enumeration through to exploitation and impact (effects), but that’s what google is for (and CTFs/Labs)! This post is just me jotting down some notes, hopefully they help defenders think about improving their posture.

Read more “Active Directory Security Cheat Sheet” →
Defence

Threat hunting with some funny results!

You never know what you will find when you go hunting! So here’s a quick tale of an explore I did using Advanced Hunting!

I went hunting here in Advanced Hunting:

Read more “Threat hunting with some funny results!” →
Uncategorized

Hunting for New Group Policies Where Scheduled Tasks are…

A common way to deploy an encryption routine used in Ransomware scenarios is to create a scheduled task to launch a cyptor exe. This is commonly deployed via a Group Policy Object (GPO).

So I wanted to look at how with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) we could detect this both on domain controllers but also on CLIENT devices (MEMBER SERVERS/PCs)

Read more “Hunting for New Group Policies Where Scheduled Tasks are used” →
Guides

Volume Shadow Copy

If you are having fun today with Defender ASR deleting lnk files then you will see the MS Script has a v1.1 which looks to VSS to see if it can restore shortcuts from shadow copies, so whilst here I thought I’d note down a few different ways to list the Volume Shadow Copies.

You will need admin rights for these to work:

Read more “Volume Shadow Copy” →
Defense

Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service with new CU Update

This is a big thing in the Exchange world from my POV! I believe this is dropping sometime today (28th September!)

History

Exchange OWA, ECP etc. are exposed online not only for mailbox access, calendar sharing but also are a requirement for hybrid mode sync capabilities.

Vulnerabilities in Exchange this year (ProxyLogon/ProxyShell) have shown how problematic an attack surface this is. The good news is, Microsoft have created a feature for Exchange to help mitigate these attacks in the future via the EM Service!

Read more “Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service with new CU Update” →
Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated Defense

How to restore AdminSDHolder Object Permissions using ADSIedit

Ok so the other day “we” as a community put out some guidance around post active directory compromise actions for when you can’t simply nuke the forest from orbit. Well, following on from that a friend asked about how to restore AdminSDHolder permissions? Read more “How to restore AdminSDHolder Object Permissions using ADSIedit” →

Defense

Windows Security Fundamentals & LPE

Introduction

Recently I decided to do the Red Team Operator: Privilege Escalation in Windows Course by Sektor7 (thanks for the recommendation Justin!). I thought I’d write some notes but also create a quick blog covering some of the Windows fundamental areas. It’s easy to actually forget how this stuff is at a detailed level so figured it helps both myself and the world to share a snippet. I’m litterally listening to the course as I type this, I’ve just imported an OVA to vmware workstation so this is litterally live! (I’m 7 video modules in!)

There’s some key parts around Windows Security Architecture that is important to know, the course does cover this off at the start so I thought I’d share a tiny bit of my notes. Read more “Windows Security Fundamentals & LPE” →

Defense

Hardening Office 365 PowerShell Access

Only admins can use PowerShell, right? Wrong! In Office 365 and Azure AD standard users can connect using PowerShell.

In this quick post we are going to look at how to disable users from being able to read other users data using the MSOL cmdlets. (this also appears to limit AzureAD cmdlets access as well)

Disable MSOL Read Access

Run the following command as a global admin: Read more “Hardening Office 365 PowerShell Access” →

Posts navigation

1 2

Recent Posts

  • The Manual Version 2.0
  • Cyber Security for PC Gamers
  • Active Directory Attacks – “It’s cold out here”
  • Mobile Device Malware Analysis
  • Port Forwarding with WSL2

Recent Comments

No comments to show.

Archives

  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • October 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018

Categories

  • Architecture
  • Breach
  • Company News
  • CTF
  • Defence
  • Defense
  • Education
  • Fiction
  • Getting into Cyber
  • Guides
  • Hacking
  • IOT
  • Leadership
  • News
  • OSINT
  • Reviews
  • Strategy
  • Threat Intel
  • Uncategorized
  • Vulnerabilities
Copyright (c) Xservus Limited