TrickBot trojan which earlier wreaked havoc on Windows users by disabling Windows Defender and infecting them has now been modified to steal Windows Active Directory credentials. This new trait of the notorious trojan makes it more lethal as far as security is concerned.
Affecting Windows domain controllers, TrickBot trojan’s new module dubbed “ADll” executes a set of commands to steal Windows Active Directory information. The new module has been discovered by Sandor Nemes, a security researcher from Virus Total.
How Windows Active Directory Credentials Are Stored?
When a server acts as a domain controller, the Active Directory database is created and is saved to the default C:WindowsNTDS folder on the domain controller.
Information including passwords, users, computers, and groups of Windows Active Directory are stored in a file called ntds.dit inside this database. Since this is highly sensitive information, Windows encrypts it using a BootKey which is stored in the System component of the Registry.
ntdsutil command [Source: Bleeping Computer]
Standard file operations cannot access the BootKey and a special tool called ntdsutil, used by administrators performing database maintenance is used to work with ntds.dit database.
How TrickBot Steals Active Directory Credentials?
To create a dump of Active Directory, administrators use a command named ifm (install from media). This command creates an installation media for setting up new Domain Controllers.
notorious trickbot trojan steals windows active directory credentials
