Applied Cybernetics Group
T1548.002 — Bypass User Account Control
- Technique
T1548.002- Tactics
- Privilege Escalation
- MISP citations
- 0
- KEV CVEs mapped
- 1
- Community rules
- 56
- thrunt rules
- 0
- Upstream
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1548/002
MITRE description
Adversaries may bypass UAC mechanisms to elevate process privileges on system. Windows User Account Control (UAC) allows a program to elevate its privileges (tracked as integrity levels ranging from low to high) to perform a task under administrator-level permissions, possibly by prompting the user for confirmation. The impact to the user ranges from denying the operation under high enforcement to allowing the user to perform the action if they are in the local administrators group and click through the prompt or allowing them to enter an administrator password to complete the action.(Citation: TechNet How UAC Works) If the UAC protection level of a computer is set to anything but the highest level, certain Windows programs can elevate privileges or execute some elevated [Component Object Model](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1559/001) objects without prompting the user through the UAC notification box.(Citation: TechNet Inside UAC)(Citation: MSDN COM Elevation) An example of this is use of [Rundll32](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/011) to load a specifically crafted DLL which loads an auto-elevated [Component Object Model](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1559/001) object and performs a file operation in a protected directory which would typically require elevated access. Malicious software may also be injected into a trusted process to gain elevated privileges without prompting a user.(Citation: Davidson Windows) Many methods have been discovered to bypass UAC. The Github readme page for UACME contains an extensive list of methods(Citation: Github UACMe) that have been discovered and implemented, but may not be a comprehensive list of bypasses. Additional bypass methods are regularly discovered and some used in the wild, such as: * <code>eventvwr.exe</code> can auto-elevate and execute a specified binary or script.(Citation: enigma0x3 Fileless UAC Bypass)(Citation: Fortinet Fareit) Another bypass is possible through some lateral movement techniques if credentials for an account with administrator privileges are known, since UAC is a single system security mechanism, and the privilege or integrity of a process running on one system will be unknown on remote systems and default to high integrity.(Citation: SANS UAC Bypass)
KEV CVEs mapped to this technique
Per MITRE CTID's hand-curated KEV→ATT&CK mappings — these are the actively-exploited vulnerabilities behind this technique's KEV signal.
Detection coverage
SigmaHQ community rules
- UAC Bypass Using Consent and Comctl32 - File (core)
- UAC Bypass Using .NET Code Profiler on MMC (core)
- UAC Bypass Using IDiagnostic Profile - File (core)
- UAC Bypass Using IEInstal - File (core)
- UAC Bypass Using MSConfig Token Modification - File (core)
- UAC Bypass Using NTFS Reparse Point - File (core)
- UAC Bypass Abusing Winsat Path Parsing - File (core)
- UAC Bypass Using Windows Media Player - File (core)
- UAC Bypass Using Iscsicpl - ImageLoad (core)
- UAC Bypass With Fake DLL (core)
- Trusted Path Bypass via Windows Directory Spoofing (core)
- HackTool - WinPwn Execution - ScriptBlock (core)
- Function Call From Undocumented COM Interface EditionUpgradeManager (core)
- UAC Bypass Using WOW64 Logger DLL Hijack (core)
- PowerShell Web Access Feature Enabled Via DISM (core)
- Potentially Suspicious Event Viewer Child Process (core)
- Explorer NOUACCHECK Flag (core)
- HackTool - Empire PowerShell UAC Bypass (core)
- HackTool - UACMe Akagi Execution (core)
- HackTool - WinPwn Execution (core)
- Sdclt Child Processes (core)
- Always Install Elevated Windows Installer (core)
- Always Install Elevated MSI Spawned Cmd And Powershell (core)
- Registry Modification of MS-settings Protocol Handler (core)
- UAC Bypass Using ChangePK and SLUI (core)
Showing 25 of 56 community rules —
the full set is tagged attack.t1548.002 in
SigmaHQ.