Active Directory

HackTheBox’s CPTS has been quietly building a reputation as the most technically demanding — and best-priced — penetration testing certification in the market. In 2026, it’s no longer a quiet alternative to OSCP. It’s a direct competitor. Here’s the real breakdown. What Is HTB CPTS? The HTB Certified Penetration Testing Specialist (CPTS) is HackTheBox Academy’s flagship professional certification. It’s built on the Penetration Tester learning path — 28 modules covering everything from network enumeration to Active Directory attacks to enterprise-level reporting. ...

Two certifications. One built around the full lifecycle of a real red team engagement. The other still the most recognized name in offensive security hiring. If you’re choosing between CRTO and OSCP in 2026, you’re asking the right question at the right time. Both are practical, hands-on, and respected. But they serve different purposes — and picking the wrong one first can cost you months of prep and a thousand dollars you didn’t need to spend yet. ...

Once you have credentials or a shell on one host, the real game begins: moving through the network without getting caught. Lateral movement in Active Directory is where most engagements are won or lost. This is the full playbook. Every technique. The tools, the commands, the detection notes, and the OPSEC considerations that separate a successful engagement from a blocked one. What Is Lateral Movement in AD? Lateral movement is the process of using access on one system to gain access to others. In an Active Directory environment, this is especially powerful because credentials, tickets, and tokens are often reusable across the domain. ...

What Is a DCSync Attack? DCSync is a credential dumping technique that abuses Active Directory’s replication mechanism. Instead of running code on a Domain Controller, an attacker with the right privileges impersonates a Domain Controller and requests password data directly from another DC using the MS-DRSR (Directory Replication Service Remote Protocol). The result: you get NTLM hashes, Kerberos keys, and plaintext passwords (in some configurations) for any account in the domain — including krbtgt and Domain Admins — without ever touching LSASS on a DC. ...

Active Directory credential attacks come in two flavors that confuse people constantly: Pass-the-Hash (PtH) and Pass-the-Ticket (PtT). Both let you authenticate as another user without knowing their plaintext password. But they work on completely different protocols, hit different defenses, and fail in different ways. This guide covers how each attack actually works under the hood, when to reach for one vs the other, how defenders detect them, and how red teamers stay ahead of detection. ...

CrackMapExec is dead. Long live NetExec. If you’ve been in offensive security for more than a few years, CrackMapExec (CME) was probably one of the first tools you learned. It became the go-to for Active Directory enumeration, credential testing, and lateral movement — packed into a single framework with clean output and a protocol-agnostic design. In 2023, the original author archived the project. The community forked it and kept building under a new name: NetExec (nxc). Same DNA, actively maintained, and compatible with everything CME could do. ...

Kerberoasting is one of the most reliable privilege escalation techniques in Active Directory environments. It’s quiet, requires no special privileges to execute, and often yields domain admin within hours — because organizations routinely set weak passwords on service accounts and never rotate them. This guide covers everything: how Kerberos works, why the attack is possible, what you need to execute it, and how defenders detect it. What Is Kerberoasting? Kerberoasting targets service accounts in Active Directory that have a Service Principal Name (SPN) set. Any authenticated domain user can request a Kerberos Ticket Granting Service (TGS) ticket for any SPN — and those tickets are encrypted with the service account’s NTLM hash. ...

BloodHound is the closest thing to a cheat code for Active Directory pentesting. Feed it your domain data and it draws a map of every path from regular user to Domain Admin — paths that would take you days to find manually. This guide covers everything: installation, data collection with SharpHound, running Cypher queries, and using the attack paths you find to actually escalate privileges. What BloodHound Does (and Why It Matters) Active Directory environments are complex. Thousands of users, hundreds of groups, nested permissions, ACL misconfigurations, Kerberos delegation settings — no human can reason about all of it manually. ...

Windows privilege escalation is one of the most critical skills in offensive security. You land on a box as a low-privileged user, and your job isn’t done until you have SYSTEM. This cheat sheet covers every technique that actually works in 2026 — with real commands, the right tools, and notes on which Windows versions each technique applies to. Bookmark it. You’ll use it. Why Windows PrivEsc Is Different From Linux Linux privilege escalation has patterns: SUID binaries, sudo misconfigs, writable cron jobs, kernel exploits. Clean and predictable. ...

There’s a specific moment in a red teamer’s career when OSCP stops feeling like the ceiling and starts feeling like the floor. You’ve got your shells. You can pivot. You understand the methodology. But real engagements don’t look like OSCP machines. They look like hardened Active Directory environments with EDR, segmented networks, and defenders who are actually watching. That’s exactly the gap the CRTO fills. The Certified Red Team Operator from Zero-Point Security is the most practical red team certification I’ve seen in the mid-level space. It’s taught by Daniel Duggan (known in the community as RastaMouse), covers Cobalt Strike end-to-end, and teaches you how to operate inside a defended environment — not just pop boxes. ...