Conceptually, the principle of zero trust demands that we trust nothing. Pragmatically speaking, cyber defenders do not operate with extreme absolutes. Frankly, they must bestow some trust in their IT infrastructure such as authentication systems, Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools, LDAP servers, and Group Policy mechanisms. But, when these trusted components are hijacked through design flaws, insider threats, or vulnerability exploits, traditional defenses often fall short. While some enterprises are forced to choose between inaction or complete shutdowns, advanced application control and containment solutions like AppGuard offer a vital third option: that can help mitigate risks in real-time without halting operations, thereby reducing the attack surface and empowering organizations to maintain business continuity amid severe threats. Even better, application control & containment can make hijacking such vital systems far more difficult.

In this post, we'll explore the vulnerabilities exposed in these systems, the risks they pose, and why adding a controls-based layer like AppGuard is essential to bridge the gaps left by detection-focused defenses. By preventing malicious actions without needing to identify threats, AppGuard complements your existing stack, reducing chaos and costs while enhancing resilience.

Familiar Nightmares Disclosed at DEF CON 33 (August 2025)

As cyber threats evolve, enterprises increasingly rely on trusted infrastructure to manage endpoints, enforce policies, and monitor networks. Tools like Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM, now integrated with Intune), Group Policy Objects (GPOs) in Active Directory, and third-party RMM solutions promise efficiency and control. However, recent revelations at DEF CON 33 underscore a harsh reality: these very tools can become attackers' gateways for remote code execution (RCE), persistence, and widespread compromise.

Risks from SCCM/Intune Vulnerabilities

At DEF CON 33, security researcher Mehdi Elyassa presented "SCCM: The Tree That Always Bears Bad Fruits," detailing how SCCM—Microsoft's endpoint management solution—serves as a native command-and-control (C2) framework when exploited. Key vulnerabilities (e.g., CVE-2024-43468 in MP_LocationManager) allow attackers to gain sysadmin access to SCCM’s backend database.

Post-exploitation risks are severe: attackers can insert malicious scripts into the database (bypassing approvals, inserting malicious scripts), enabling arbitrary PowerShell execution as SYSTEM on all managed clients. This facilitates mass remote code execution, credential dumping (e.g., NAA accounts and Entra ID secrets via CryptoAPI decryption), and persistence. In hybrid Intune setups, this extends to cloud pivots via Graph API permissions.

Enterprises face enterprise-wide ransomware deployment, lateral movement, and minimal logging, turning SCCM into a force multiplier for attacks affecting thousands of Windows endpoints.

Risks from Group Policy Vulnerabilities

In a parallel DEF CON 33 talk, "Turning Your Active Directory into the Attacker's C2: Modern Group Policy Objects (GPO) Enumeration and Exploitation," researchers Quentin Roland and Wilfried Bécard exposed how adversaries can use the enterprise’s own infrastructure for stealth communication and endpoint compromise. GPOs can be weaponized as a built-in C2 mechanism. GPOs enforce configurations across most, if not all, endpoints with periodic refreshes (every 90 minutes).

Vulnerabilities center on access control list abuses: write privileges allow injecting malicious tasks, scripts, or file transfers into GPOs, while NTLM relaying and GPO link poisoning enable some of the most frightening outcomes, targeting even protected groups of endpoints.

Risks include remote code execution via scheduled/logon scripts on endpoints, persistence through enforced malicious configurations, and C2-like control for lateral movement (e.g., enabling WinRM for pivots). This compromises all linked Windows devices, leading to privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and undetected breaches, especially in misconfigured AD environments where knowledge gaps amplify underestimation of threats.

Other RMM Vulnerability Exploits from the Last 5 Years

RMM tools, designed for remote endpoint management, have been prime targets for supply-chain attacks, mirroring SCCM/GPO risks with RCE and mass compromise. Over the past five years (2020-2025), notable in-the-wild exploits include:

• Kaseya VSA (2021, CVE-2021-30116): REvil ransomware exploited authentication bypass for RCE, pushing malware to thousands of endpoints, enabling persistence and lateral movement across MSP clients.
• ConnectWise ScreenConnect (2024, CVE-2024-1709, CVE-2024-1708): Authentication bypass and path traversal allowed admin account creation and RCE, facilitating credential theft, backdoors, and ransomware staging.
• BeyondTrust Remote Support (2024, CVE-2024-12686): Chinese state actors exploited for initial access, leading to RCE, credential theft, and ransomware prep.
• SimpleHelp Remote Support (2025, CVE-2024-57727, CVE-2024-57726, CVE-2024-57728): Ransomware groups (Play, DragonForce) used path traversal, escalation, and file uploads for RCE, deploying C2 implants and exfiltrating data.
• N-able N-central (2025, CVE-2025-8875, CVE-2025-8876): Command injection zero-days enabled unauth RCE, added to CISA's catalog for active exploitation, risking full system takeover and endpoint pivots.

These incidents highlight RMM as high-value targets for supply-chain attacks, often resulting in enterprise-wide RCE, persistence, and extortion.

Three Options When Vulnerabilities in IT Infrastructure Undermine Trust

When severe vulnerabilities hit trusted infrastructure like SCCM, Active Directory, or RMM tools, enterprises face limited choices:

1. Do Nothing: Accept the risk, hoping exploits don't materialize or that detection tools catch them in time. This often leads to breaches, as seen in headline attacks where dwell times exceed weeks.
2. Temporarily Shut Down the System: Disable the vulnerable component (e.g., pause GPO refreshes or offline RMM agents) until patched. This disrupts business operations, causing downtime and productivity losses—untenable for mission-critical environments.
3. Mitigate Risks with Controls: Apply targeted restrictions to limit the component's capabilities without full shutdown, containing potential damage while maintaining functionality.

Most organizations lack robust tools for the third option, defaulting to the first two and amplifying risks.

How AppGuard Provides the Third Option

Unlike detection tools that react after threats emerge, AppGuard prevents malicious actions proactively, without having to recognize the malware itself. AppGuard's controls-based approach—encompassing launch controls (blocking untrusted executions), containment controls (restricting app behaviors), and isolation controls (guarding objects and processes)—empowers enterprises with that critical third path to enforce extra, temporary controls until vulnerabilities are patched. These extra controls are situation-dependent and might require IT personnel to suspend them during ‘maintenance Windows’ when system changes must be made.

For exploited infrastructure:

• In SCCM/Intune scenarios, AppGuard can contain agent processes (e.g., CcmExec.exe) to block unauthorized script runs, neutralizing RCE without disabling management.
• For GPO abuses, it can restrict policy-applied scripts and tasks, preventing escalation even if GPOs are poisoned.
• Against RMM exploits, AppGuard isolates remote agents, limiting file drops or command executions to reduce C2 risks.

In 2021, temporary, extra policies were enforced to restrict the Kesaya tool’s activities while the system was vulnerable. Specifically, they restricted file write operations to select folders and applied launch restrictions to those folders.

AppGuard Also Helps Prevent Hijacking of Trusted IT Infrastructure

The Microsoft SCCM vulnerability (CVE-2024-43468) involved direct manipulations of SCCM’s backend database. This is not unique historically. Many different infrastructure tools can be hijacked for malicious purposes by selectively altering their backend components.

AppGuard can reduce the attack surface of endpoints that host vital IT infrastructure tools. For example, AppGuard can enforce isolation policies that deny access to database files to all computing processes except the one or more that must access them. Similar policies can protect other critical objects from the rest of the computing processes running on the same endpoint. Further, AppGuard can isolate select computing processes, blocking potentially malicious memory reads and writes. This can readily protect the SCCM backend database from 3^rd party computing processes, but doing so against SCCM’s own computing processes can disrupt normal SCCM operations. Always test temporary risk mitigations to know their actual impact.

Such controls-based protection does not guarantee that IT infrastructure would never be hijacked; they significantly reduce the odds of adversaries succeeding. In today’s malware detection-gap world, every enterprise would benefit from having extra layers of risk mitigation that do not require an army of cyber analysts constantly interpreting telemetry 24 by 7 by 365.

Conclusion: No Silver Bullet—Just Smarter Attack Surface Reduction

Cybersecurity has no perfect solution; adversaries will always probe for weaknesses in trusted infrastructure. However, by reducing the attack surface through layered controls, enterprises can minimize impacts without over-reliance on detection or drastic shutdowns. AppGuard isn't a cure-all, but it fills the gaps where others fail, stopping threats at their core and easing operational burdens. Don't wait for the next DEF CON revelation—fortify your endpoints today. Visit www.appguard.us to learn how AppGuard can integrate seamlessly into your zero-trust strategy and protect what matters most.