HiveNightmare

aka SeriousSam. Exploit allowing you to read any registry hives as non-admin.

What is this?

An exploit for HiveNightmare,

Authors

Discovered by @jonasLyk.
PoC by @GossiTheDog, powered by Porgs.
Additions by @0xblacklight

Scope

Appears to work on all supported versions of Windows 10, where System Protection is enabled (should be enabled by default in most configurations). May not work on Windows Server

How does this work?

The permissions on key registry hives are set to allow all non-admin users to read the files by default, in most Windows 10 configurations. This is an error.

What does the exploit do?

Allows you to read SAM data (sensitive) in Windows 10, as well as the SYSTEM and SECURITY hives.

This exploit uses VSC to extract the SAM, SYSTEM, and SECURITY hives even when in use, and saves them in current directory as HIVENAME, for use with whatever cracking tools, or whatever, you want.

Pulling Credentials out

python3 secretsdump.py -sam SAM -system SYSTEM -security SECURITY LOCAL

Bugs and issues

Currently only looks for the first ten system recovery snapshots.
~~Haven't added support for dumping SECURITY, SYSTEM etc registry hives yet as I can't be bothered.~~

More info?

I wrote a blog: https://doublepulsar.com/hivenightmare-aka-serioussam-anybody-can-read-the-registry-in-windows-10-7a871c465fa5

SecuProject/HiveNightmare