Executing Active Directory Attack Simulation

When to Use

• Assessing the security of an Active Directory domain and forest against common and advanced attack techniques
• Identifying attack paths from low-privilege domain user to Domain Admin using privilege relationship analysis
• Validating that Kerberos security configurations, credential policies, and delegation settings resist known attacks
• Testing detection capabilities of the SOC and EDR tools against Active Directory-specific TTPs
• Evaluating the effectiveness of tiered administration models and privileged access workstations

Do not use without explicit written authorization from the domain owner, against production domain controllers during business hours unless approved, or for testing that could cause account lockouts affecting real users without prior coordination.

Prerequisites

• Written authorization specifying the target AD domain, testing constraints, and any off-limits accounts or systems
• Low-privilege domain user account (minimum starting point) to simulate realistic attacker position
• Testing workstation joined to the domain or network access to domain controllers on ports 88, 135, 139, 389, 445, 636, 3268, 3269
• BloodHound Community Edition or Enterprise with SharpHound/AzureHound collectors
• Impacket toolkit, Mimikatz (or pypykatz), Rubeus, and CrackMapExec installed on the attack platform
• Hashcat or John the Ripper with current wordlists (rockyou.txt, SecLists) for offline credential cracking

Workflow

Step 1: Active Directory Reconnaissance

Enumerate the AD environment from a low-privilege domain user position:

• Domain enumeration: Get-ADDomain or crackmapexec smb <dc_ip> -u <user> -p <pass> --domains to identify domain name, functional level, domain controllers, and forest trusts
• User enumeration: Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties ServicePrincipalName,AdminCount,PasswordLastSet to identify service accounts, privileged accounts, and stale passwords
• Group enumeration: Map membership of high-value groups (Domain Admins, Enterprise Admins, Schema Admins, Account Operators, Backup Operators) using net group "Domain Admins" /domain
• GPO enumeration: Get-GPO -All | Get-GPOReport -ReportType XML to identify Group Policy configurations including password policies, audit settings, and software deployment
• Trust enumeration: nltest /domain_trusts /all_trusts to map inter-domain and inter-forest trusts, noting trust direction and transitivity
• LDAP queries: Use ldapsearch or ADExplorer to search for accounts with userAccountControl flags indicating "password never expires", "password not required", or "DES-only Kerberos"

Step 2: BloodHound Attack Path Analysis

Collect and analyze AD relationship data to identify the shortest paths to Domain Admin:

• Run SharpHound collector: SharpHound.exe -c All,GPOLocalGroup --outputdirectory C:\temp\ to collect users, groups, sessions, ACLs, trusts, and GPO data
• Import the JSON output into BloodHound and run built-in queries:
  • "Shortest Paths to Domain Admins from Owned Principals"
  • "Find Principals with DCSync Rights"
  • "Find Computers where Domain Users are Local Admin"
  • "Shortest Paths to Unconstrained Delegation Systems"
  • "Find All Paths from Kerberoastable Users"
• Mark the compromised user as "owned" in BloodHound and analyze the resulting attack paths
• Identify ACL-based attack paths: GenericAll, GenericWrite, WriteDACL, WriteOwner, ForceChangePassword on high-value objects
• Document each identified attack path with the chain of relationships and affected objects

Step 3: Kerberos Attacks

Execute Kerberos-based attacks against identified vulnerable accounts:

• Kerberoasting: Request TGS tickets for accounts with SPNs: impacket-GetUserSPNs <domain>/<user>:<pass> -dc-ip <dc_ip> -request -outputfile kerberoast.hashes. Crack offline with hashcat -m 13100 kerberoast.hashes /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt
• AS-REP Roasting: Target accounts without Kerberos pre-authentication: impacket-GetNPUsers <domain>/ -dc-ip <dc_ip> -usersfile users.txt -format hashcat -outputfile asrep.hashes. Crack with hashcat -m 18200 asrep.hashes /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt
• Silver Ticket: If a service account's NTLM hash is cracked, forge a TGS ticket for that service using impacket-ticketer -nthash <hash> -domain-sid <sid> -domain <domain> -spn <service/host> <username>

…