Title

Local administrator accounts must have their privileged token filtered to prevent elevated privileges from being used over the network on domain systems. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

A compromised local administrator account can provide means for an attacker to move laterally between domain systems. With User Account Control enabled, filtering the privileged token for local administrator accounts will prevent the elevated privileges of these accounts from being used over the network.

Check Content

If the system is not a member of a domain, this is NA. If the following registry value does not exist or is not configured as specified, this is a finding: Registry Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Subkey: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System Value Name: LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0 This setting may cause issues with some network scanning tools if local administrative accounts are used remotely. Scans should use domain accounts where possible. If a local administrative account must be used, temporarily enabling the privileged token by configuring the registry value to 1 may be required.

Fix Text

Configure the following registry value: Registry Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Subkey: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System Value Name: LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-47845r2_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-36439

Group Title: Local admin accounts filtered token policy enabled on domain systems.

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.