Overview

Active Directory (AD) is the backbone of enterprise identity management—yet misconfigurations, stale accounts, and excessive privileges routinely turn it into a hacker’s playground. Attackers exploit weak Group Policies, Kerberoasting vulnerabilities, and trust relationships to escalate from a single compromised account to full domain dominance, often undetected. Many organizations lack visibility into AD attack paths, assuming perimeter defenses or basic audits are sufficient. Our Active Directory Security Assessment exposes these critical gaps through adversarial emulation, hardening your AD environment against lateral movement, credential theft, and ransomware pivots.

What is an Active Directory Security Assessment?

An Active Directory Security Assessment is a deep-dive evaluation where ethical hackers simulate attacker tactics to uncover misconfigurations, privilege escalation paths, and weak authentication protocols within your AD infrastructure. Using tools like BloodHound, Mimikatz, and PowerView, our experts map attack chains from initial compromise to domain admin takeover, providing actionable remediation to disrupt adversary playbooks and enforce least-privilege principles.

Key Focus Areas

We target risks that enable AD-centric attacks, aligned with MITRE ATT&CK and SpecterOps’ BloodHound findings, including:

✅ Insecure Group Policy Objects (GPOs)

• Overly permissive policies, password policy weaknesses, or unmanaged legacy GPOs.
  ✅ Kerberos Vulnerabilities

• Kerberoasting, AS-REP roasting, and golden/silver ticket attacks.
  ✅ Privilege Escalation Paths

• Misconfigured ACLs, nested group memberships, and AdminSDHolder abuses.
  ✅ Stale/Orphaned Accounts

• Dormant user/service accounts with excessive privileges or SPN exposure.
  ✅ Unsecured Delegation

• Constrained/unconstrained delegation risks and Resource-Based Constrained Delegation (RBCD) exploits.
  ✅ Weak Authentication Protocols

• NTLM relay attacks, LDAP signing/channel binding misconfigurations.
  ✅ Domain Trust Vulnerabilities

• SID filtering gaps, cross-forest trust abuses, and domain controller replication flaws.
  ✅ Credential Exposure

• Clear-text passwords in scripts, service account credential leakage.
  ✅ Monitoring & Detection Gaps

• Lack of auditing for critical events (e.g., DCsync, SAMR access).

How We Execute Active Directory Security Assessments

Our process mimics advanced adversaries like APT29 and ransomware operators:

1. Reconnaissance & Enumeration

   • Map AD forests, domains, OUs, and trust relationships using BloodHound and PowerView.

2. Privilege Escalation Testing

   • Abuse misconfigured ACLs, GPOs, or shadow admin accounts to escalate privileges.

3. Kerberos Exploitation

   • Harvest TGTs/TGS tickets for offline cracking (Kerberoasting) or golden ticket forging.

4. Lateral Movement Simulation

   • Test Pass-the-Hash, OverPass-the-Hash, and RDP session hijacking.

5. Domain Persistence Checks

   • Create rogue domain controllers, backdoor GPOs, or skeleton key implants.

6. Sensitive Data Exposure Analysis

   • Identify unsecured shares containing passwords, backups, or PII.

7. Trust Relationship Abuse

   • Exploit cross-domain trusts for privilege escalation or forest-wide compromise.

8. Detection Evasion Testing

   • Test stealthy techniques like DCShadow or LSASS memory dumping with Cobalt Strike.

9. Post-Exploitation Impact Assessment

   • Quantify breach scenarios (e.g., ransomware encryption paths, data exfiltration).

10. Hardening & Monitoring Recommendations

    • Provide step-by-step guidance for ACL cleanup, SIEM alerting, and Microsoft LAPS adoption.

Our Methodologies
We align with industry-leading frameworks, including:
✅ MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Matrix
✅ Microsoft Security Baselines
✅ CIS Benchmarks for Active Directory
✅ NIST SP 800-53 (AC-2, IA-5)
✅ ADAttackPath Analysis

Why Choose Active Directory Security Assessments?

🔒 AD-Specific Expertise: OSCP, CRTP, and CISSP-certified testers with 10+ years in AD exploitation.
🔒 Attack Path Visualization: BloodHound-generated maps showing exact privilege escalation routes.
🔒 Zero False Positives: Proof-of-concept exploits for every critical finding.
🔒 Compliance Alignment: Meet HIPAA, GDPR, and SOX requirements for identity governance.
🔒 Proven Results: Identified 1,800+ AD vulnerabilities in 2023, including domain-wide takeover paths in global enterprises.

Lock Down AD—Before Attackers Turn It Into a Weapon
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