Elevation of Privilege from Local Admin to gMSA

Elevation of Privilege from Local Admin to gMSA

In my previous blog post I explained how Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA) passwords are stored locally on the servers. In this blog, I’ll share how you can easily elevate yourself from the local administrator to gMSA without a need to know the account password.

I’m already using this technique in AADInternals to execute code as AD FS service account.

Hunt for the gMSA secrets

Hunt for the gMSA secrets

Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA’s) can be used to run Windows services over multiple servers within the Windows domain.

Since the launch of Windows Server 2012 R2, gMSA has been the recommended service account option for AD FS. As abusing AD FS is one of my favourite hobbies, I wanted to learn how gMSAs work.