Pentesting Active Directory and Windows-based Infrastructure

This book teaches you the tactics and techniques used to attack a Windows-based environment, along with showing you how to detect malicious activities and remediate misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.
You’ll begin by deploying your lab, where every technique can be replicated. The chapters help you master every step of the attack kill chain and put new knowledge into practice. You’ll discover how to evade defense of common built-in security mechanisms, such as AMSI, AppLocker, and Sysmon; perform reconnaissance and discovery activities in the domain environment by using common protocols and tools; and harvest domain-wide credentials. You’ll also learn how to move laterally by blending into the environment’s traffic to stay under radar, escalate privileges inside the domain and across the forest, and achieve persistence at the domain level and on the domain controller. Every chapter discusses OpSec considerations for each technique, and you’ll apply this kill chain to perform the security assessment of other Microsoft products and services, such as Exchange, SQL Server, and SCCM.
By the end of this book, you'll be able to perform a full-fledged security assessment of the Microsoft environment, detect malicious activity in your network, and guide IT engineers on remediation steps to improve the security posture of the company.

Type
ebook
publication date
2023-11-17
what you will learn

Understand and adopt the Microsoft infrastructure kill chain methodology
Attack Windows services, such as Active Directory, Exchange, WSUS, SCCM, AD CS, and SQL Server
Disappear from the defender's eyesight by tampering with defensive capabilities
Upskill yourself in offensive OpSec to stay under the radar
Find out how to detect adversary activities in your Windows environment
Get to grips with the steps needed to remediate misconfigurations
Prepare yourself for real-life scenarios by getting hands-on experience with exercises

no of pages
360
duration
720
key features
Find out how to attack real-life Microsoft infrastructure * Discover how to detect adversary activities and remediate your environment * Apply the knowledge you’ve gained by working on hands-on exercises * Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
approach
Readers will be taken through every attack stage during security assessment of Microsoft infrastructure. At each step along the way there is a comprehensive description of the technique with practical exercises reader can follow to master it. Detection and remediation recommendations about every technique will be presented in an actionable manner.
audience
This book is for pentesters and red teamers, security and IT engineers, as well as blue teamers and incident responders interested in Windows infrastructure security. The book is packed with practical examples, tooling, and attack-defense guidelines to help you assess and improve the security of your real-life environments. To get the most out of this book, you should have basic knowledge of Windows services and Active Directory.
meta description
Enhance your skill set to pentest against real-world Microsoft infrastructure with hands-on exercises and by following attack/detect guidelines with OpSec considerations
short description
This practical guide helps you explore the pentesting of Microsoft infrastructure in detail, and enhances your offensive skillset by showing you the different ways to perform security assessment. This book will help blue teamers and IT engineers get up to speed with possible security issues they may encounter in their Windows environments.
subtitle
A comprehensive practical guide to penetration testing Microsoft infrastructure
keywords
Microsoft windows; Microsoft SQL Server; ms sql server; red team; blue team; penetration testing tools; penetration testing book
Product ISBN
9781804611364