GCIH · Question #741
Which of the following dumped hashes would be most useful to an attacker?
The correct answer is D. Administrator. The built-in Administrator account hash is the highest-value credential in a Windows environment because it grants unrestricted local access and is usable in pass-the-hash attacks.
Question
Which of the following dumped hashes would be most useful to an attacker?
Exhibit
Options
- ABetty
- BAarti
- CSystem
- DAdministrator
How the community answered
(55 responses)- A7% (4)
- B2% (1)
- C4% (2)
- D87% (48)
Why each option
The built-in Administrator account hash is the highest-value credential in a Windows environment because it grants unrestricted local access and is usable in pass-the-hash attacks.
Betty is a standard user account with limited privileges; compromising her hash provides minimal access to the system or network.
Aarti is also a standard user account and offers the same limited privilege level, making her hash low-value compared to an administrative credential.
The SYSTEM account is a local service identity used by the OS kernel; it does not have a password in the traditional sense and cannot be used to authenticate over the network the way a user account hash can.
The built-in Administrator account (RID 500) has full local administrative privileges and is never locked out by default policy, making its hash ideal for pass-the-hash or offline cracking attacks. An attacker who obtains this hash can authenticate to any local service or perform lateral movement across machines that share the same local Administrator password, a common misconfiguration. This makes it far more operationally valuable than standard user hashes.
Concept tested: Credential dumping and value of privileged account hashes
Source: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1003/
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