Understanding ACLs in Active Directory: The Hidden Gatekeepers Introduction In the world of Active Directory (AD), most attackers focus on user accounts, group memberships, and password policies. But beneath the surface lies one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked security mechanisms: Access Control Lists (ACLs). ACLs silently govern who can read, write, delete, and […]
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Active Directory Persistence, Detection Evasion & Cleanup Once you have Domain Admin or full control of the domain, the game changes. You’re no longer trying to get in — you’re trying to stay in, quietly, for as long as possible. This phase covers how attackers create backdoors, avoid detection, and remove their tracks after a
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Active Directory Privilege Escalation – Domain Dominance You’ve moved laterally, harvested credentials, and mapped the domain. Now it’s time for the real prize: elevating privileges within Active Directory. This phase focuses on attacking misconfigured permissions, trusts, and delegation paths that allow you to escalate from a regular domain user to high-priv accounts like Domain Admin,
Active Directory Lateral Movement – Pivoting Through the Domain Once you’ve compromised a user account or cracked service credentials, the next step is moving from host to host across the network. This is known as lateral movement — and it’s how attackers turn a single foothold into domain-wide compromise. The goal here isn’t just to
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Active Directory Exploitation – Gaining Initial Access from Enumeration Once you’ve mapped out the environment — users, SPNs, shares, and trust relationships — the next step is to exploit weaknesses that lead to initial access or valid credentials. This phase focuses on common and powerful Active Directory exploitation techniques that pentesters use to break in.
Active Directory Enumeration Before you exploit anything in Active Directory, you need to understand what you’re working with. Enumeration is the most critical phase of attacking AD — because if you skip it or do it poorly, you’ll miss the attack paths that matter. This post covers how to map out users, groups, computers, trusts,
Breaking Into Active Directory: What Every Beginner Needs to Know When attacking Active Directory, the goal isn’t just popping shells — it’s compromising the domain. And that requires a very different mindset than attacking standalone systems. On a single host, getting SYSTEM might feel like the end. In AD, that’s just the beginning. The real
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Rubeus for Pentesters: Introduction Kerberos is a cornerstone of authentication in modern Windows environments, especially within Active Directory domains. But it’s also full of opportunities for abuse — if you know where to look. Rubeus is one of the most powerful tools for post-exploitation Kerberos abuse. Written in C#, it allows attackers and red teamers
PowerSploit Framework: The Swiss Army Knife of Post-Exploitation Overview PowerSploit is a modular post-exploitation framework written in PowerShell, designed for penetration testers and red teamers to interact with Windows environments after gaining initial access. It focuses on privilege escalation, credential access, persistence, reconnaissance, and bypassing security defenses — all using native PowerShell. Developed by the
ldapsearch for Pentesters: Active Directory LDAP Enumeration Category: Pentesting Tools & TechniquesTool Focus: Active Directory, LDAP Queries, User and Group Enumeration What Is ldapsearch? ldapsearch is a command-line utility used to query LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) servers. In a Windows environment, this typically means querying Active Directory for objects like: Unlike some tools, ldapsearch
