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REDMAW

Internal Infrastructure

Kerberoasting

An authenticated domain user requests service tickets and cracks them offline to recover service account credentials.

RedMaw Research6 min read

Definition

Kerberoasting abuses a normal Kerberos behavior: any authenticated domain user can request a service ticket for an account with a registered service principal name. The ticket is encrypted with a key derived from that account's password, enabling offline cracking.

How the attack works

  1. 01The attacker holds any authenticated domain identity
  2. 02They enumerate accounts with service principal names
  3. 03They request service tickets for those accounts
  4. 04Tickets are cracked offline, without further domain interaction
  5. 05Recovered service account credentials are used for lateral movement or escalation

How adversarial validation works

From an authorized foothold, RedMaw enumerates roastable accounts and, within agreed exploitation limits, demonstrates which recovered credentials grant meaningful access, then follows the resulting path to show what it reaches.

Tags

  • active directory
  • credentials
  • privilege escalation

Validation

How RedMaw validates this attack

Validation runs only inside authorized scope, with agreed exploitation limits.

  1. 01Enumerate accounts with service principal names from an authorized foothold
  2. 02Request tickets and assess credential strength within agreed limits
  3. 03Demonstrate the access a recovered credential grants
  4. 04Chain onward to show reachable systems and data

Keep going

Related

Further reading

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