A different way of abusing Zerologon (CVE-2020-1472)
n August 2020, Microsoft patched CVE-2020-1472 aka Zerologon. This is in my opinion one of the most critical Active Directory vulnerabilities of the past few years, since it allows for instant escalation to Domain Admin without credentials. The most straightforward way to exploit this involves changing the password of a Domain Controller computer account. This is a risky move and could potentially break things in the environment. In this blog we explore a new way to exploit this vulnerability, which though it has a few more prerequisites, is safer to use for security professionals assessing network security. We’ll also dive a bit more into the authentication protocols in Active Directory and how they can be tied in with the Zerologon vulnerability. While this is a different way of exploiting the vulnerability, it does not bypass the mitigations released, so if you have already installed the August 2020 patches, you are also protected from this attack.