T1191
About this technique
The Microsoft Connection Manager Profile Installer (CMSTP.exe) is a command-line program used to install Connection Manager service profiles. (Citation: Microsoft Connection Manager Oct 2009) CMSTP.exe accepts an installation information file (INF) as a parameter and installs a service profile leveraged for remote access connections.
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Adversaries may supply CMSTP.exe with INF files infected with malicious commands. (Citation: Twitter CMSTP Usage Jan 2018) Similar to Regsvr32 / ”Squiblydoo”, CMSTP.exe may be abused to load and execute DLLs (Citation: MSitPros CMSTP Aug 2017) and/or COM scriptlets (SCT) from remote servers. (Citation: Twitter CMSTP Jan 2018) (Citation: GitHub Ultimate AppLocker Bypass List) (Citation: Endurant CMSTP July 2018) This execution may also bypass AppLocker and other whitelisting defenses since CMSTP.exe is a legitimate, signed Microsoft application.
CMSTP.exe can also be abused to Bypass User Account Control and execute arbitrary commands from a malicious INF through an auto-elevated COM interface. (Citation: MSitPros CMSTP Aug 2017) (Citation: GitHub Ultimate AppLocker Bypass List) (Citation: Endurant CMSTP July 2018)
Curated incident relationships
These associations come from maintained incident records. The recorded confidence is shown when the source record provides it.
Daily items linked through predicted CVEs
A Daily item appears here when it mentions a CVE whose triage artifact predicts this technique. This is not a verified ATT&CK mapping.
Predicted CVE associations
These backfilled or model-produced candidates come from the current triage artifact. They are informational, not official MITRE mappings.