Category: Technical Reference

Sneaky Active Directory Persistence #11: Directory Service Restore Mode (DSRM)

The content in this post describes a method by which an attacker could persist administrative access to Active Directory after having Domain Admin level rights for 5 minutes. I presented on this AD persistence method in Las Vegas at DEF CON 23 (2015). Complete list of Sneaky Active Directory Persistence Tricks posts   The Directory …

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Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3 Download & Release Information

Looks like we are getting closer to Windows Server 2016 RTM! Microsoft released Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3 in late August (Download & Release Notes).

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Great Active Directory Attack & Defense Resources

I have found the following resources to be excellent when it comes to attacking & defending an enterprise with Microsoft products (Active Directory, Windows, etc). This was created in response to the many questions regarding who to follow (Twitter) or what blogs to read. 🙂 Microsoft Platform Security Resources:

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Active Directory Security Risk #101: Kerberos Unconstrained Delegation (or How Compromise of a Single Server Can Compromise the Domain)

At Black Hat USA 2015 this summer (2015), I spoke about the danger in having Kerberos Unconstrained Delegation configured in the environment. When Active Directory was first released with Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft had to provide a simple mechanism to support scenarios where a user authenticates to a Web Server via Kerberos and needs to …

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Black Hat USA 2015 & DEF CON 23 (2015) Presentation Slides Posted!

Slides from both of my talks this week in Vegas are now posted. There are some differences between the talks, though the primary content is similar/same. DEF CON 23 (2015) Talk Detail Black Hat USA 2015 Talk Detail Note that while some of the content is the same (mainly Blue Team information), I describe exploiting …

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Kerberos Golden Tickets are Now More Golden

At my talk at Black Hat USA 2015, I highlighted new Golden Ticket capability in Mimikatz (“Enhanced Golden Tickets”). This post provides additional detailed on “enhanced” Golden Tickets. Over the past few months, I researched how SID History can be abused in modern enterprises. As part of this research, I reached out to Benjamin Delpy, …

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Detecting Mimikatz Use

Benjamin Delpy published some YARA rules in detecting Mimikatz use in your environment. More information on Mimikatz capability is in the “Unofficial Mimikatz Guide & Command Reference” on this site. YARA is described as: YARA is a tool aimed at (but not limited to) helping malware researchers to identify and classify malware samples. With YARA …

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Windows 10 Microsoft Passport (aka Microsoft Next Generation Credential) In Detail

At the Microsoft Ignite conference this week, there are several sessions covering Windows 10 features. One of biggest changes in Windows 10 is the new credential management method and the related “Next Generation Credential”, now named Microsoft Passport. There hasn’t been much information on how the new credential system works, so I challenged myself to …

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Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2 Now Available for Download

Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2 Now Available for Download (ISO or VHD): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-technical-preview What’s new in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in Windows Server Technical Preview: Privileged access management Privileged access management (PAM) helps mitigate security concerns for Active Directory environments that are caused by credential theft techniques such pass-the-hash, spear phishing, and …

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SPN Scanning – Service Discovery without Network Port Scanning

The best way to discover services in an Active Directory environment is through what I call “SPN Scanning.” The primary benefit of SPN scanning for an attacker over network port scanning is that SPN scanning doesn’t require connections to every IP on the network to check service ports. SPN scanning performs service discovery via LDAP …

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