Active Directory | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

For many organizations, Active Directory (AD) service accounts are quiet afterthoughts, persisting in the background long after their original purpose has been forgotten. To make matters worse, these orphaned service accounts (created for legacy applications, scheduled tasks, automation scripts, or test environments) are often left active with non-expiring or stale passwords. It's no surprise that AD service accounts often evade routine security oversight. Security teams, overwhelmed by daily demands and lingering technical debt, often overlook service accounts (unlinked to individual users and rarely scrutinized) allowing them to quietly fade into the background. However, this obscurity makes them prime targets for attackers seeking stealthy ways into the network. And left unchecked, forgotten service accounts can serve as silent gateways for attack paths and lateral movement across enterprise environments. In this article, we'll examine the risks that forgotten AD service accounts...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new account takeover (ATO) campaign that leverages an open-source penetration testing framework called TeamFiltration to breach Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) user accounts. The activity, codenamed UNK_SneakyStrike by Proofpoint, has targeted over 80,000 user accounts across hundreds of organizations' cloud tenants since a surge in login attempts was observed in December 2024, leading to successful account takeovers. "Attackers leverage Microsoft Teams API and Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers located in various geographical regions to launch user-enumeration and password-spraying attempts," the enterprise security company said . "Attackers exploited access to specific resources and native applications, such as Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, and others." TeamFiltration, publicly released by researcher Melvin "Flangvik" Langvik in August 2022 at the DEF CON security conference...

A privilege escalation flaw has been demonstrated in Windows Server 2025 that makes it possible for attackers to compromise any user in Active Directory (AD). "The attack exploits the delegated Managed Service Account (dMSA) feature that was introduced in Windows Server 2025, works with the default configuration, and is trivial to implement," Akamai security researcher Yuval Gordon said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This issue likely affects most organizations that rely on AD. In 91% of the environments we examined, we found users outside the domain admins group that had the required permissions to perform this attack." What makes the attack pathway notable is that it leverages a new feature called Delegated Managed Service Accounts ( dMSA ) that allows migration from an existing legacy service account. It was introduced in Windows Server 2025 as a mitigation to Kerberoasting attacks. The attack technique has been codenamed BadSuccessor by the w...

Threat actors with links to the Play ransomware family exploited a recently patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows as a zero-day as part of an attack targeting an unnamed organization in the United States. The attack, per the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, leveraged CVE-2025-29824 , a privilege escalation flaw in the Common Log File System (CLFS) driver. It was patched by Microsoft last month. Play , also called Balloonfly and PlayCrypt, is known for its double extortion tactics, wherein sensitive data is exfiltrated prior to encryption in exchange for a ransom. It's active since at least mid-2022. In the activity observed by Symantec, the threat actors are said to have likely leveraged a public-facing Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) as an entry point, taking advantage of an as-yet-undetermined method to move to another Windows machine on the target network. The attack is notable for the use of Grixba , a bespoke information stealer previously attr...

Cybersecurity researchers have found that the Microsoft Active Directory Group Policy that's designed to disable NT LAN Manager (NTLM) v1 can be trivially bypassed by a misconfiguration. "A simple misconfiguration in on-premise applications can override the Group Policy, effectively negating the Group Policy designed to stop NTLMv1 authentications," Silverfort researcher Dor Segal said in a report shared with The Hacker News. NTLM is a still widely used mechanism particularly in Windows environments to authenticate users across a network. The legacy protocol, while not removed due to backward compatibility requirements, has been deprecated as of mid 2024. Late last year, Microsoft officially removed NTLMv1 starting in Windows 11, version 24H2, and Windows Server 2025. While NTLMv2 introduces new mitigations to make it harder to perform relay attacks, the technology has been besieged by several security weaknesses that have been actively exploited by threat acto...

Many organizations struggle with password policies that look strong on paper but fail in practice because they're too rigid to follow, too vague to enforce, or disconnected from real security needs. Some are so tedious and complex that employees post passwords on sticky notes under keyboards, monitors, or desk drawers. Others set rules so loose they may as well not exist. And many simply copy generic standards that don't address their specific security challenges. Creating a password policy that works to protect your organization in the real world requires a careful balance: it must be strict enough to protect your systems, flexible enough for daily work, and precise enough to be enforced consistently. Let's explore five strategies for building a password policy that works in the real world. 1. Build compliant password practices Is your organization in a regulated industry like healthcare, government, agriculture, or financial services? If so, one of your top priorities...

Service accounts are vital in any enterprise, running automated processes like managing applications or scripts. However, without proper monitoring, they can pose a significant security risk due to their elevated privileges. This guide will walk you through how to locate and secure these accounts within Active Directory (AD), and explore how Silverfort's solutions can help enhance your organization's security posture. Understanding Security Accounts Service accounts are specialized Active Directory accounts that provide the necessary security context for services running on servers. Unlike user accounts , they aren't linked to individuals but enable services and applications to interact with the network autonomously. With their high-level permissions, service accounts are attractive targets for attackers if left unmanaged. Hence, proper management and monitoring are critical to prevent security breaches. Finding Service Accounts in Active Directory Due to the sheer number of acco...

Until just a couple of years ago, only a handful of IAM pros knew what service accounts are. In the last years, these silent Non-Human-Identities (NHI) accounts have become one of the most targeted and compromised attack surfaces . Assessments report that compromised service accounts play a key role in lateral movement in over 70% of ransomware attacks. However, there's an alarming disproportion between service accounts' compromise exposure and potential impact, and the available security measures to mitigate this risk.  In this article, we explore what makes service accounts such a lucrative target, why they are beyond the scope of most security control, and how the new approach of unified identity security can prevent service accounts from compromise and abuse .  Active Directory Service accounts 101: Non-human identities used for M2M In an Active Directory (AD) environment , service accounts are user accounts that are not associated with human beings but are used for ma...

The most dangerous vulnerability you've never heard of. In the world of cybersecurity, vulnerabilities are discovered so often, and at such a high rate, that it can be very difficult to keep up with. Some vulnerabilities will start ringing alarm bells within your security tooling, while others are far more nuanced, but still pose an equally dangerous threat. Today, we want to discuss one of these more nuanced vulnerabilities as it is likely lurking in your environment waiting to be exploited: Active Directory Certificate Services vulnerabilities.  vPenTest by Vonahi Security recently implemented an attack vector specifically designed to identify and mitigate these hidden AD CS threats. But first, let's explore why AD CS vulnerabilities are so dangerous and how they work. What is Active Directory Certificate Services? Active Directory Certificate Services ("AD CS"), as defined by Microsoft is, "a Windows Server role for issuing and managing public key infrastructure (PKI) cert...

Simply relying on traditional password security measures is no longer sufficient. When it comes to protecting your organization from credential-based attacks, it is essential to lock down the basics first. Securing your Active Directory should be a priority – it is like making sure a house has a locked front door before investing in a high-end alarm system. Once the fundamentals are covered, look at how integrating external attack surface management (EASM) can significantly augment your password security, offering a robust shield against potential cyber threats and breaches.  First Secure Your Active Directory IT administrators should not just adhere to the minimum password policy standards by including complexity mandates. To enhance Active Directory security, they should enforce a policy that prohibits users from generating feeble passwords and incorporate a tool to detect and block the use of compromised passwords. passwords and adding a solution that can check for the use o...

Tom works for a reputable financial institution. He has a long, complex password that would be near-impossible to guess. He's memorized it by heart, so he started using it for his social media accounts and on his personal devices too. Unbeknownst to Tom, one of these sites has had its password database compromised by hackers and put it up for sale on the dark web. Now threat actors are working hard to link these leaked credentials back to real-life individuals and their places of work. Before long, a threat actor will use Tom's legitimate email account to send a spear-phishing link to his CEO. This is a common account takeover scenario where malicious attackers gain unauthorized access to the organization's systems, putting critical information and operations at risk. It usually starts with compromised credentials. We'll run through why account takeover is so hard to stop once it starts and why strong password security is the best prevention.  Why are account takeover attacks so...