T1615 Group Policy Discovery — ATT&CK Technique

Adversaries may gather information on Group Policy settings to identify paths for privilege escalation, security measures applied within a domain, and to discover patterns in domain objects that can be manipulated or used to blend in the environment. Group Policy allows for centralized management of user and computer settings in Active Directory (AD). Group policy objects (GPOs) are containers for group policy settings made up of files stored within a predictable network path `\\SYSVOL\\Policies\`. Adversaries may use commands such as gpresult or various publicly available PowerShell functions, such as Get-DomainGPO and Get-DomainGPOLocalGroup, to gather information on Group Policy settings. Adversaries may use this information to shape follow-on behaviors, including determining potential attack paths within the target network as well as opportunities to manipulate Group Policy settings (i.e. Domain or Tenant Policy Modification) for their benefit.

Detection coverage (6)

• Suspicious GPO Discovery With Get-GPO low
• Gpresult Display Group Policy Information medium
• HackTool - SharpUp PrivEsc Tool Execution critical
• Potential Reconnaissance Activity Via GatherNetworkInfo.VBS medium
• Suspicious Reconnaissance Activity Via GatherNetworkInfo.VBS high
• Windows WinPEAS PowerShell Script Execution

Malware using this technique

• LunarWeb
• DUSTTRAP
• BloodHound
• Empire
• Emissary

Threat actors using this technique

• Turla

Read the full analysis on IntelFusions