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You're reading from  Pentesting Active Directory and Windows-based Infrastructure

Product typeBook
Published inNov 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781804611364
Edition1st Edition
Concepts
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Author (1)
Denis Isakov
Denis Isakov
author image
Denis Isakov

Denis Isakov is a passionate security professional with 10+ years of experience ranging from incident response to penetration testing. He worked in various industries, including banking and consultancy. Denis is specialized in offensive security with particular focus on Active Directory and adversary malware. He has earned a Master's degree in Information Systems and Technologies in 2012. Additionally, Denis has achieved an array of industry certifications ranging from OSCP to GXPN. Outside of computers, Denis enjoys sports and discovering new places.
Read more about Denis Isakov

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Certificate theft

This section will focus on certificate theft at the endpoint. If AD CS is deployed in the environment, chances are high that certificates are being used for domain authentication. Windows uses a certificate in .pfx format, which contains the certificate itself and the corresponding private key. However, private keys can be stored separately – for example, on specialized hardware such as Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs), Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), or smart cards. Most companies do not introduce hardware elements, and keys are stored in the operating system. Windows protects keys with the help of the Data Protection Application Programming Interface (DPAPI). For the demonstration, let us issue the khal.drogo user certificate with a non-exportable private key. We can do it via the Certificates snap-in in Microsoft Management Console (MMC). Now, we are ready to start with the practice.

THEFT1 – Exporting certificates using the CryptoAPI

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Pentesting Active Directory and Windows-based Infrastructure
Published in: Nov 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781804611364

Author (1)

author image
Denis Isakov

Denis Isakov is a passionate security professional with 10+ years of experience ranging from incident response to penetration testing. He worked in various industries, including banking and consultancy. Denis is specialized in offensive security with particular focus on Active Directory and adversary malware. He has earned a Master's degree in Information Systems and Technologies in 2012. Additionally, Denis has achieved an array of industry certifications ranging from OSCP to GXPN. Outside of computers, Denis enjoys sports and discovering new places.
Read more about Denis Isakov