PTH-Toolkit

The "PTH-Toolkit" is a set of tools designed to facilitate pass-the-hash (PtH) attacks in penetration testing and security assessment scenarios. Pass-the-hash is a technique where an attacker uses a hashed user credential (rather than the plaintext password) to authenticate to remote servers or services. The PTH-Toolkit leverages this approach to test and exploit systems that are vulnerable to this type of attack.

The toolkit allows for the use of NTLM or LanMan hashes to authenticate against various Windows services and protocols, such as SMB, WinRM, and RDP. The toolkit typically includes tools for various protocols, enabling attackers to test multiple attack vectors within a network. It can be used in conjunction with other tools to extract hashes from a system (like Mimikatz) and then use those hashes for further exploitation.

While the specific contents of the PTH-Toolkit can vary, it generally includes tools like:

  • pth-winexe: For executing commands remotely using a hash.
  • pth-wmic: For performing WMI queries with a hash.
  • pth-smbclient: A version of smbclient that accepts NTLM hashes.
  • pth-mssqlclient: For authenticating to SQL Servers using a hash.

An example of using a tool from the PTH-Toolkit might be:

pth-winexe -U DOMAIN/user%aad3b435b51404eeaad3b435b51404ee:ed2b1f468c5f915f9cbe9e2fa1c6d345 //<TARGET_IP> cmd.exe
  • -U DOMAIN/user%hash specifies the domain, username, and NTLM hash for authentication.
  • <TARGET_IP> is the IP address of the target machine.
  • cmd.exe is the command to be executed on the remote system.