Active-Directory

LLMNR (Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution) and NBT-NS (NetBIOS Name Service) are legacy name resolution protocols that attackers exploit to capture credentials through poisoning attacks. When a Windows client can’t resolve a hostname via DNS, it falls back to broadcasting LLMNR and NBT-NS queries across the network — and attackers respond with malicious answers, capturing authentication attempts. Tools like Responder and Inveigh make this attack trivial, turning misconfigured name resolution into domain compromise. This guide shows how to disable LLMNR and NBT-NS via Group Policy, with registry paths, PowerShell verification, testing procedures, and complete rollback instructions for Windows 11 and Server 2025 environments. ...

ASREProasting is the lesser-known sibling of Kerberoasting, but it’s just as dangerous and significantly harder to detect. Unlike Kerberoasting, which requires authenticated access to request service tickets, ASREProasting exploits accounts with Kerberos pre-authentication disabled — allowing attackers to request encrypted AS-REP responses for any user without knowing their password. These encrypted responses can be cracked offline to recover plaintext credentials. This guide builds comprehensive ASREProasting detection in Splunk: the Event 4768 query patterns that identify AS-REQ abuse, accounts vulnerable to ASREProasting, volume anomalies, and the Splunk dashboards that turn authentication logs into actionable threat intelligence. ...

Kerberoasting is the technique every red team uses and every blue team underdetects. An attacker requests Kerberos TGS (Ticket Granting Service) tickets for service accounts, then cracks the encrypted portion offline to recover plaintext passwords. The attack leaves Event 4769 footprints on Domain Controllers that most SOCs ignore — and that’s exactly what makes Kerberoasting so effective in real breaches. This guide builds comprehensive Kerberoasting detection in Splunk: the Event 4769 query patterns that catch RC4 encryption abuse, service account targeting, volume anomalies, and the Splunk dashboards that turn raw Kerberos logs into actionable security intelligence. ...

If your environment still runs Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) — and most large enterprises that adopted federation between 2015 and 2020 still do — you are sitting on the single highest-value target in your identity stack. An attacker who extracts the ADFS token-signing certificate can mint SAML tokens for any user, including domain admins, with no further AD interaction and no Kerberos or NTLM tickets to detect. That class of attack is Golden SAML, and it’s exactly what hit SolarWinds-era victims in 2020. This is the practical ADFS security hardening guide for 2026: rotating signing certificates, auditing claim rules, enforcing Extranet Lockout, blocking the mimikatz / ADFSDump extraction path, and the migration path to Microsoft Entra ID for the eventual decommission. ...

A honeypot is a security resource whose value lies entirely in being attacked. It looks like a legitimate target — a database, an admin account, a file share, a misconfigured cloud key — but in reality it has no legitimate users, no real data, and one job: when someone touches it, raise an alarm. The first interaction is the alarm, and that’s why honeypots routinely deliver detection in minutes for techniques that signature-based EDR misses entirely. This guide answers what is a computer honeypot in 2026, walks through the practical taxonomy (low- vs high-interaction, production vs research), and shows the deployment patterns and SIEM integration that actually catch attackers rather than wasting blue-team time. ...

If an attacker compromises a single endpoint in your environment and finds a reused local Administrator password, they own every other workstation that shares it. That single misconfiguration is how a phishing click on one helpdesk laptop becomes a 4,000-endpoint ransomware incident — and it’s exactly what Windows LAPS (Local Administrator Password Solution) was built to prevent. This is the complete step-by-step Windows LAPS implementation guide for enterprise environments in 2026: AD schema preparation, KDS root key generation, encrypted password storage, Group Policy reference, PowerShell administration, and the full DSRM password backup workflow for Domain Controllers. ...

NTLM has been on borrowed time for two decades, and Microsoft made it official: as of late 2023 Microsoft formally announced that NTLM is deprecated, with Kerberos and the new Negotiate-based authentication taking over. Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025 ship with NTLMv1 fully removed, and Microsoft strongly recommends auditing and disabling NTLMv2 wherever Kerberos can take over. This guide walks through how to disable NTLM in Windows safely — auditing first, staging the rollout, and rolling back cleanly if something breaks. ...

Platform Hack The Box Difficulty Easy OS Windows Points 20 Release 2020-02-22 Tags AD, AS-REP Roasting, DCSync Sauna is a deceptively rich Active Directory box. Despite its Easy rating, it walks you through three classic AD attack primitives — AS-REP Roasting, credential reuse via AutoLogon, and DCSync — making it one of the best beginner boxes for anyone preparing for OSCP, CRTP, or AD-heavy red team interviews. ...

Kerberoasting remains the highest-ROI Active Directory attack: any authenticated domain user can request a service ticket for any account with a Service Principal Name (SPN), and crack that ticket offline. No special privileges. No exploits. Just Kerberos working as designed. ...