MovementHound is an advanced PowerShell tool designed for active enumeration of lateral movement capabilities in Windows environments. Unlike traditional tools that rely on group membership to ascertain user privileges, MovementHound focuses on effective rights, providing a more definitive picture of the actual access a user holds. This is particularly crucial in environments where Discretionary Access Control Lists (DACLs) and security descriptors deviate from the norm, leading to potential blind spots in permission assessments.

Key Features

• Reliable Enumeration: MovementHound directly probes target systems to determine access, rather than inferring from group membership, resulting in reliable outcomes.
• Consolidated Techniques: The tool integrates various standalone scripts into a unified collector, offering comprehensive coverage for different lateral movement techniques, such as WMI, SSH, WinRM, and DCOM.

Why Use MovementHound?

Understanding the actual capabilities of a user beyond their group affiliations is vital for security assessments. Group memberships can often misrepresent a user’s capabilities due to the complexities of DACLs rewritten by administrators or third-party applications.

Examples of Common Misconceptions:

• Custom Access Control Entries (ACEs) allow operations without being listed in standard user groups, creating potential oversight.
• Group-level checks may fail on critical machines where admin rights are required for enumeration.

MovementHound addresses these gaps by fostering thorough assessments, allowing security professionals to unearth overlooked paths that could indicate persistent low-privilege access.

How MovementHound Works

MovementHound operates by executing operations to confirm access, making it intentionally noisy for effectiveness. It runs various modules in parallel to maintain efficiency, utilizing the least privilege necessary for each technique.

Techniques Covered

MovementHound supports numerous modules to enumerate access, including but not limited to:

• Service Creation/Reconfiguration to check for openings in service management.
• WMI Access Enumeration both over WMI and WSMAN.
• DCOM Execution checking per-AppID rights.
• SSH Access with Plink support and custom configurations.

Data Output

Output is user-friendly for real-time assessments, with options to produce ZIP archives compatible with BloodHound Legacy for enhanced insight into user paths and permissions following an enumeration.

MovementHound not only aids in identifying lateral movement opportunities but also serves as an essential tool for verifying low privilege footholds in potentially compromised systems, thereby enhancing overall security posture. It is recommended to run MovementHound in controlled environments where it is authorized to ensure accurate and useful assessments.