"Active Directory remains the authentication backbone for over 90% of Fortune 1000 companies. AD's importance has grown as companies adopt hybrid and cloud infrastructure, but so has its complexity. Every application, user, and device traces back to AD for authentication and authorization, making it the ultimate target. For attackers, it represents the holy grail: compromise Active Directory, and you can access the entire network."
"The 2024 Change Healthcare breach showed what can happen when AD is compromised. In this attack, hackers exploited a server lacking multifactor authentication, pivoted to AD, escalated privileges, and then executed a highly costly cyberattack. Patient care came to a screeching halt. Health records were exposed. The organization paid millions in ransom. Once attackers control AD, they control your entire network. And standard security tools often struggle to detect these attacks because they look like legitimate AD operations."
Active Directory authenticates and authorizes users, devices, and applications for over 90% of Fortune 1000 companies, making it the core identity system. AD complexity has increased with hybrid and cloud adoption, spanning on-premises domain controllers, Azure AD Connect synchronization, cloud identity services, and multiple authentication protocols. Attackers target AD because compromising it allows creation of accounts, permission changes, disabling security controls, privilege escalation, and lateral movement without triggering most alerts. Common attack techniques include golden ticket attacks, DCSync extraction of password hashes, and Kerberoasting against weak service account passwords. Hybrid environments and synchronization mechanisms expand the attack surface and increase exploitation opportunities.
Read at The Hacker News
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