Toughen Up Your AD

Semperis argues AI-driven attacks are outpacing identity teams as machine identities outnumber human ones 10:1, and urges building organization-wide cyber resilience around hybrid identity protection before the next crisis.

Syncing Domain Admins into Entra ID lets attackers pivot from compromised on-prem AD to the cloud, and back via password writeback. CIS and Microsoft advise keeping privileged admin accounts cloud-only.

SpecterOps argues identity risk now extends beyond Tier Zero, as attackers increasingly use legitimate credentials and trusted relationships to reach backups, regulated data, and other critical workloads.

Thomas Elling demonstrates querying Active Directory through SQL Server's OLE DB ADSI provider with OPENQUERY and OPENROWSET, adding new PowerUpSQL functions that automate AD recon from SQL servers.

Explains how Microsoft LAPS stores local admin passwords in LDAP, and how incorrect delegation on ms-MCS-AdmPwd can expose cleartext credentials that aid lateral movement.

Shows how to find systems where Domain Admins are likely logged in by querying the ServicePrincipalName attribute over LDAP, with a PowerShell module to automate the process.