Active Directory Exploitation: The Attack Vector Behind Nearly Every Major Breach

Active Directory Exploitation: The Attack Vector Behind Nearly Every Major Breach

Author: Adrian Gaitan

Publication: Evaluris Solutions

Estimated reading time: 9–10 minutes

Despite cloud adoption, Zero Trust initiatives, and modern endpoint security, Active Directory (AD) remains the most critical security dependency in enterprise environments.

If an attacker compromises Active Directory, they effectively control:

• Authentication
• Authorization
• Identity trust
• Lateral movement
• Persistence

This is why nearly every major ransomware or enterprise breach in the last several years includes Active Directory compromise as a central phase, not an afterthought.

Whether the attacker starts with phishing, a vulnerable web application, or a supply-chain foothold, the objective is almost always the same:

Escalate into identity control.

Active Directory was designed for availability and manageability, not for operating in a permanently hostile environment.

Several structural realities make AD uniquely attractive:

• Centralized trust model
• Backward-compatible authentication protocols
• Long-lived service accounts
• Complex delegation and permission inheritance
• Limited native visibility into abuse patterns

Attackers don't need zero-days.

They exploit misunderstood features.

Most real-world intrusions follow a predictable sequence. Understanding this chain is essential for both defense and detection.

1. Initial access

Initial compromise often occurs outside AD:

• Phishing leading to credential theft
• VPN or remote access compromise
• Web application exploitation
• Third-party or supply-chain entry

At this stage, attackers usually have low-privilege access.

1. Active Directory enumeration

Once inside, attackers quietly map the environment:

• Users and groups
• Computers and servers
• Trust relationships
• Delegation settings
• Certificate services
• ACL misconfigurations

This phase is rarely detected because it uses legitimate directory queries.

1. Credential access

Attackers then focus on harvesting credentials:

• LSASS memory dumping
• Kerberos ticket extraction
• Cached credential abuse
• Service account targeting

Credential access is the pivot point where minor access turns into major risk.

1. Privilege escalation

This is where many organizations fail.

Attackers abuse:

• Weak ACLs on users or groups
• Misconfigured delegation
• Vulnerable certificate templates
• Excessive group memberships

No exploit required — only logic.

1. Lateral movement

With elevated privileges, attackers move:

• Over SMB, WinRM, RDP
• Using NTLM or Kerberos
• Leveraging trusted administrative protocols

From a logging perspective, this often looks like normal IT activity.

1. Domain dominance & persistence

Finally, attackers establish long-term control:

• DCSync to replicate credentials
• Golden Ticket attacks
• GPO modification
• AD Certificate-based persistence

At this point, full remediation becomes complex, expensive, and disruptive.

Kerberoasting & AS-REP Roasting

Service accounts often have:

• Long-lived passwords
• Excessive privileges
• Weak password hygiene

Attackers extract Kerberos tickets and crack them offline, avoiding detection entirely.

(Reference)

Despite years of guidance, NTLM is still widely enabled.

Attackers relay authentication attempts to:

• Access internal services
• Escalate privileges
• Move laterally without cracking passwords

This remains one of the most underestimated enterprise risks.

(Reference)

ADCS is now considered one of the most dangerous identity attack surfaces.

Misconfigured certificate templates can allow attackers to:

• Request certificates as other users
• Authenticate as domain admins
• Maintain stealthy, long-term persistence

Many environments have ADCS deployed without any security review.

(Reference)

If attackers gain replication privileges, they can impersonate a domain controller and extract all password hashes.

No malware.

No exploit.

Just protocol abuse.

(Reference)

Once the KRBTGT account is compromised, attackers can forge Kerberos tickets indefinitely.

In some breaches, Golden Tickets remained valid for months or years before detection.

(Reference)

Active Directory attacks are difficult to detect because:

• They use built-in protocols
• They generate valid authentication events
• They mimic legitimate administrative behavior

Most SIEM alerts fire — but teams lack the context to understand what matters.

Without knowledge of offensive AD techniques:

• Alerts are ignored
• False positives dominate
• True compromise blends into noise

As networks dissolve into hybrid and cloud models, identity becomes the control plane.

Attackers understand this.

That's why modern ransomware operations prioritize:

• Credential theft over exploits
• Identity persistence over malware
• Trust abuse over brute force

Organizations that still defend AD passively are operating on outdated assumptions.

Organizations with resilient identity security:

• Regularly audit AD permissions and delegation
• Actively monitor for abuse patterns, not just log volume
• Restrict NTLM wherever possible
• Treat ADCS as critical infrastructure
• Train defenders in offensive identity techniques

They do not assume Active Directory is "secure by default."

Teams that improve AD security fastest:

• Combine blue-team monitoring with red-team simulation
• Practice real-world attack paths in lab environments
• Understand how misconfigurations chain together
• Learn how attackers persist after "cleanup"

This is why identity-focused offensive knowledge has become foundational, not optional.

Active Directory is not legacy technology.

It is the backbone of enterprise trust — and the primary target in modern attacks.

Organizations that fail to understand how AD is exploited will continue to suffer:

• Slow detection
• Deep compromise
• Expensive recovery

Those that invest in identity-focused security knowledge gain a decisive advantage.

In 2026, identity is the battlefield — and Active Directory is ground zero.