What would you do if you discovered that your organization’s Active Directory is compromised? Understanding the latest tactics that cybercriminals use to exploit vulnerabilities within Active Directory is essential for maintaining your security posture. A recent breakthrough in this area reveals unsettling methods that bypass traditional authentication measures, allowing unauthorized data access. Let’s delve deeper into these new lateral movement techniques and how they can affect you.
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Understanding Active Directory and Its Importance
Active Directory (AD) serves as the backbone of many organizational IT environments. It manages computers, users, and other resources on a network. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that attackers view Active Directory as a prime target. You could see it as the keys to your castle—if someone gets hold of them, they could wreak havoc.
The Role of Authentication in Active Directory
Authentication is the process of verifying a user’s identity before granting them access to resources. In the context of Active Directory, effective authentication protects sensitive information and restricts unauthorized access. With rising cyber threats, understanding how attackers can bypass these authentication barriers is crucial.
New Lateral Movement Techniques
During Black Hat USA 2025, cybersecurity experts revealed alarming new techniques targeting AD and Microsoft Entra ID environments. These new tactics exploit vulnerabilities that you may not have previously considered. Let’s break down some key techniques.
Seamless SSO Key Manipulation
Key Insight: Attackers can manipulate Seamless Single Sign-On (SSO) settings to create unauthorized access routes.
If you have control over an on-premises Active Directory, you’re at risk with this technique. By altering the OnPremAuthenticationFlowPolicy, attackers can forge Kerberos service tickets for any user in the tenant. This means they can effectively obtain access without being detected, bypassing multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Mechanism
- Attackers inject backdoor keys into the policy.
- They create persistent mechanisms for access.
- The attackers generate Kerberos tickets for any domain user.
This means that even if you have enabled MFA, attackers could still gain access by using these clever manipulations.
Forging Kerberos Tickets
Concern: Attackers can provision backdoor keys on .onmicrosoft.com domains, circumventing logical checks.
One particular risk with this method is that Microsoft’s audit logs do not detect these variations. Since detection can be quite challenging, accountability within organizational networks diminishes significantly. As a security leader, your teams would struggle to trace unauthorized actions.
Exploiting Exchange Hybrid Certificates
Key Insight: Attackers can exploit Exchange hybrid deployments using certificate-based authentication abuses.
By leveraging tools like ADSyncCertDump.exe, they can extract hybrid certificates and request Service-to-Service (S2S) tokens from Microsoft. These tokens allow unrestricted access to vital services such as Exchange Online and SharePoint without validating user context.
Characteristics of Attack Tokens
- Unsigned bearer tokens with access privileges that are incredibly broad.
- No audit logs or Conditional Access policy enforcement during token issuance.
- Once issued, these tokens remain non-revocable, which poses a significant risk.
This means attackers can impersonate any user within your environment for extensive periods, sometimes even up to 24 hours.
Impersonation Capabilities
Risk: Impersonation capabilities pose ongoing threats, especially for organizations with hybrid AD deployments.
Even though Microsoft has implemented partial mitigations since August 2025, vulnerabilities in Exchange and SharePoint are still prevalent. As a decision-maker, you need to understand the implications this could have for both your data and operational integrity.
Mitigations: What You Can Do
Microsoft recognizes the severity of these vulnerabilities and has introduced a few limitations to curb potential abuses. However, risks remain, and proactive measures are essential for your organization. Here are some steps you can consider:
Audit Your Exchange Hybrid Configurations
You should start auditing your Exchange hybrid configurations. Employing detection queries like:
AuditLogs | where InitiatedBy.user.displayName == “Office 365 Exchange Online”
This query can help identify suspicious activities, ensuring that your team can act promptly against potential threats.
Enable Hard Matching in Entra ID Connect
To prevent cloud-only account takeovers and reduce exposure, it’s beneficial to enable hard matching in Entra ID Connect. This proactive measure can also help your organization better manage identity across environments.
Implement Least Privilege Principle
Review your Directory Synchronization Accounts and make sure to implement the principle of least privilege. You should limit permissions to only what is essential for their tasks. This approach helps mitigate damage if an account is compromised.
Monitor Authentication Policy Modifications
You must closely monitor any unauthorized modifications to authentication policies in your organization. Setting alerts for unexpected changes can serve as a first line of defense against lateral movement attempts.
Transition to Dedicated Exchange Hybrid Applications
Consider shifting to dedicated Exchange hybrid applications. Doing this can help safeguard against several vulnerabilities by limiting the attack surface experienced in hybrid deployments.
The Future of Active Directory Security
With the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, you should remain vigilant and proactive. Staying updated with the latest discoveries and tactics employed by cyber criminals is not just an option but a necessity.
Importance of Education and Training
Continuous education for your IT security team is vital. Regular training programs should cover both known vulnerabilities and the latest attack patterns. This investment can empower your team to respond effectively to emerging threats.
Collaborating with Cybersecurity Experts
Engaging with cybersecurity professionals can bring additional perspectives and methodologies to your organization. Whether that’s by consulting external experts or joining a cybersecurity consortium, these actions enhance your team’s capabilities to respond to threats.
Embracing Advanced Threat Detection Technologies
To add another layer of security, consider adopting advanced threat detection technologies. Tools that use AI and machine learning can help to identify unusual patterns or behaviors that may indicate a security compromise.
Conclusion
Understanding new Active Directory lateral movement techniques that bypass authentication is crucial for safeguarding your organization from potential threats. With persistent threats in cyber domains, it’s essential to adopt multifaceted approaches to security. By taking preventive actions—like auditing configurations, enforcing least privileges, and staying informed—you can greatly enhance your defenses against lateral movement techniques.
Maintaining an up-to-date defense mechanism, being proactive in your security posture, and focusing on continuous improvement will help protect not only your organization’s data but also its reputation. Security in your digital realm isn’t just about technology; it’s a commitment to establishing a culture of vigilance and resilience against evolving threats.