Mar 02 2026

Detecting Fake Active Directory Password Changes

In Active Directory, there has been a method that’s been around for many years which changes the password last set date but not the actual password. This is what I call a “fake password change” since the account appears to have a recent password when scanning for old passwords based on password last set, but the underlying password hasn’t actually changed.
I spoke about this in my 2015 BSides Charm talk which was my first conference talk.

Why does this happen?
There are times where service account (or admin accounts) need to have password changes, but someone doesn’t want to do the work to change them. The ability to fake a password change requires modify rights on the pwdLastSet attribute which provides the ability to check/uncheck the setting “User must change password at next logon”. This setting is enabled when you want the user to change their own password when they logon.


How does this work?

To see how this works, we’ll focus on the service account “svc-AGPM” in my lab. This account last changed its password on August 20th in 2025.

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Jan 20 2026

Active Directory Security Tip #16: Mitigating Kerberoast Attacks

There are two main password attacks leveraged by adversaries; one is called Password Spraying and the other is called Kerberoasting.

This post focuses on identifying accounts that may be targeted for Kerberoasting and how to harden the environment against Kerberoasting.

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Dec 02 2025

Active Directory Security Tip #15: Active Directory Domain Root Permissions

This week let’s look at Active Directory domain permissions which are configured on the domain root and apply to the domain. There are many different type of concerning permissions, but let’s look at the most egregious.

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Nov 04 2025

Active Directory Security Tip #14: Group Managed Service Accounts (GMSAs)

Group Managed Service Accounts (GMSAs)

User accounts created to be used as service accounts rarely have their password changed. Group Managed Service Accounts (GMSAs) provide a better approach (starting in the Windows 2012 timeframe). The password is managed by AD and automatically changed. This means that the GMSA has to have security principals explicitly delegated to have access to the clear-text password. Much like with other areas where delegation controls access (LAPS), determining who should have be delegated access needs to be be carefully considered.

Key Points for Group Managed Service Accounts (GMSAs)

  • The GMSA password is managed by AD.
  • Computers hosting GMSA service account(s) request the current password from Active Directory to start the associated service.
  • Configure the GMSA to allow computer account(s) access to the GMSA password.
  • If an attacker compromises any computer hosting services using the GMSA, the GMSA is compromised.
  • If attacker compromises an account with rights to request the GMSA password, the GMSA is compromised.
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Oct 19 2025

Improve Entra ID Security More Quickly

At BSides Northern Virginia (BSides NoVa) in October 2025, I presented a talk on how to improve Entra ID security quickly. This post captures the key information from my talk slides.

This article describes the Entra ID settings and configuration that should be set to improve security including:

  • User Default Configurations
  • Guest Defaults
  • User Applications Consent and Permissions
  • Secure Entra ID roles
  • Privileged Role Membership Protection
  • Role Assignable Group Configurations
  • Highly Privileged Applications
  • Conditional Access Policies
  • Partner Access
  • Securing Entra Connect
  • Secure Entra ID Quickly Checklist
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Oct 12 2025

BSides NoVa 2025 Presentation Slides Posted


My BSides NoVA talk on Saturday, October 11, 2025 was titled “10 Ways to Improve Entra ID Security Quickly“. I focused on the areas that tend to be missed in Entra ID.
Talk slides are now posted.


Downoad Presentation Slides

Oct 11 2025

Microsoft Interview

A couple years ago, the Microsoft Security Experts Blog interviewed me regarding Azure Active Directory (Entra ID) security.


Read the Interview here

Oct 08 2025

Active Directory Security Tip #13: Reviewing Foreign Security Principals (FSPs)

Review the membership of groups for accounts and groups from another Active Directory forest (technically another domain, but using forest here). These are called “Foreign Security Principals” (FSPs) like the ones highlighted in the image. These FSPs are accounts that exist in another forest but have rights in the AD forest.

Any FSPs should be scrutinized and removed if not required. It’s important to review and strictly control these since they may be highly privileged. In this example, compromise of another AD forest (TRDNET) would result in compromise of the current AD forest (Trd.com).


PowerShell script to scan privileged groups for FSPs:
https://github.com/PyroTek3/ActiveDirectory/blob/main/Invoke-FindPrivilegedFSPs.ps1

Oct 06 2025

Active Directory Security Tip #12: Kerberos Delegation

I have mentioned in several presentations that Kerberos delegation is impersonation. Kerberos delegation is used when a service (ex. web server) needs to impersonate a user when connecting to a resource (ex. database).

There are a 4 types of Kerberos delegation:

Unconstrained delegation should be converted to constrained delegation due to security concerns. Any Kerberos delegation that is no longer required should be removed. If there’s no associated Kerberos service principal name, Kerberos authentication isn’t working and this should be fixed or removed.

PowerShell code using the Active Directory PowerShell module:
https://github.com/PyroTek3/ActiveDirectory/blob/main/Get-ADKerberosDelegation.ps1

Oct 04 2025

The History of Active Directory Security

During the Summer of 2024, I had a talk at Troopers called “A Decade of Active Directory Attacks:
What We’ve Learned & What’s Next” (Slides & Video) where I focused on the key milestones of Active Directory security (history). This article covers my “decade of Active Directory attacks” in some detail which was correlated with public information and GitHub release information. This Active Directory security history article breaks down the notable attacks into a timeline starting with Active Directory’s release in 2000 and continuing until the present day in late 2025.
If you are interested in the history of Active Directory, this is the article for you.

If you have anything to add or update on the History of Active Directory Security, please email me: sean[@]adsecurity[dot]org.

“Baby Steps” (2000 – 2009)

We start with a time period I call “Baby Steps” (2000 – 2009). This is where some of the key attack capability still in use today was developed.

April, 1997: Paul Ashton posted to NTBugtraq about “‘Pass the Hash’ with Modified SMB Client” leveraging the username and LanMan hash against Windows NT.

February 17, 2000: Active Directory released as part of Windows 2000 (RTM was December 5, 1999 while retail release was February 17, 2000).

March, 2001: Sir Dystic of Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) releases SMBRelay and SMBRelay2.

2007: NBNSpoof tool created by Robert Wesley McGrew (LLMNR/NBT-NS).

July 2008: Hernan Ochoa publishes the “Pass-the-Hash Toolkit“ (later called WCE and was the inspiration for Mimikatz).

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