2 posts
Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) is increasingly targeted by threat actors to achieve privilege escalation and persistence through misconfigured certificate templates and shadow credential abuse. By leveraging tools like Certipy and Whisker, attackers can bypass traditional credential defenses, necessitating behavioral detection strategies focused on LDAP enumeration, anomalous certificate issuance, and directory modifications.
Delegated Managed Service Accounts (dMSAs) introduce a Kerberos-based authentication model to replace LDAP password retrieval, enhancing Active Directory security. However, the Ouroboros technique demonstrates that attackers controlling dMSA permissions can exploit the successor logic to inherit the privileges of superseded legacy accounts. This turns the dMSA into a persistence and account takeover primitive, requiring defenders to monitor internal authorization paths rather than just password retrieval events.
