ACL Abuse

Abuse of ACL access rights to achieve lateral movement

Permissions in Active Directory are controlled through Access Control Lists (ACL). Each security principal (user, group, process) has a corresponding ACL. ACLs define both who has access to which assets or resource, and what level of access they are granted. ACLs are made up of Access Control Entries (ACE) that explicity allow and/or deny users or groups from access.

If misconfigured, ACLs can be leveraged by attackers to achieve lateral movement or privilege escalation inside the domain. The abuse of ACL access rights are dependent on the specific access granted to the attacking user.


Abuse ACL access over groups

Use access rights over a group to add users

Abuse ACL Access over User

Use access rights over a user to take over that user account.

Group Managed Service Account

Read the NT password hash of Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA)