Individual skill

abusing-adcs

Enumerate and abuse Active Directory Certificate Services with Certipy and Certify — the ESC1 through ESC16 escalation paths, vulnerable template and CA configurations, NTLM relay to web enrollment, certificate-based authentication and persistence, and the strong-mapping changes that gate several of them. Use when a domain has a certificate authority, when Certipy or BloodHound reports vulnerable templates, or when escalating from a low-privilege domain user.

secskills-offense/skills/abusing-adcs/SKILL.md

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Observed behavior: Local scripts
Last checked: Nov 6, 2026

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Repository stars (not skill ratings): 186
Repository last updated: Sep 4, 2026
License: MIT

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security Repository topic
skills Repository topic
security Derived category

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SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 9,872 bytes

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# Abusing AD CS

A certificate authority in an Active Directory domain is usually the shortest
path from a standard user to domain administrator, because certificate
templates are permission objects that almost nobody audits. A single template
that lets the enrollee supply their own subject name is a full domain
compromise, and it is the default on more networks than it should be.

Only against domains you are authorized to test.

## When to Use

- The domain has a CA (`pKIEnrollmentService` objects exist)
- `certipy find` or BloodHound reports vulnerable templates