Credential theft
One of the first goals attackers are usually after is to extract identities and use them for lateral movement to get hold of even more identities and repeat this procedure until they find highly privileged credentials (such as those of a domain administrator) to then gain control over AD and quickly, over the entire environment.
In this section, we will investigate the basics of authentication within an on-premises AD environment and how credential-related attacks work.
Authentication protocols
Lateral movement, pass the hash, pass the ticket – these attacks are not limited to PowerShell, so they are not a PowerShell-specific problem. But since PowerShell relies on the same authentication mechanisms as normal authentication, it is important to look a little bit behind the scenes.
When we are talking about authentication, we are jumping into very cold water, diving deep into protocols. After reading these sections, you will not be an expert on authentication...