Active Directory Penetration Testing

Before an Active Directory assessment begins, we work closely with the client to define a clear testing scope and establish expectations for the engagement. This includes identifying in-scope domains, systems, user accounts, and network segments, as well as documenting any exclusions and confirming testing windows to ensure the assessment aligns with operational requirements.

Starting from a zero or low-privilege user, we perform internal reconnaissance and OSINT-based intelligence gathering to identify publicly available information, leaked credentials, exposed infrastructure, and details that may assist an attacker in understanding the environment. We also collect information related to domain structure, trust relationships, accessible systems, and account exposure to establish a foundation for further testing.

We conduct comprehensive enumeration of the Active Directory environment to identify users, groups, permissions, trusts, policies, and domain configurations that may introduce security risk. Automated tooling combined with manual analysis is used to uncover vulnerabilities such as weak permissions, excessive privileges, insecure delegation, Kerberos weaknesses, credential exposure, misconfigurations, and privilege escalation paths that attackers could abuse.

Where appropriate, we safely validate identified weaknesses through controlled exploitation to demonstrate realistic impact. This may include privilege escalation, credential abuse, lateral movement, delegation abuse, or paths to domain compromise. All findings are manually validated to eliminate false positives while maintaining the stability of the environment.

We provide a detailed report outlining identified vulnerabilities, attack paths, business impact, and prioritized remediation recommendations. Reporting is tailored for both technical teams and leadership, with clear explanations and actionable guidance. If requested, we also conduct an out-briefing or executive walkthrough of the assessment findings.

As an additional service, after remediation efforts are completed, we can perform a follow-up assessment to validate that vulnerabilities have been properly addressed. This includes verifying configuration changes, confirming patches are applied successfully, and ensuring no new security weaknesses were introduced during remediation.