Conquering Everest - Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Two months ago, we announced the availability of Gold Finger 10.0 for Microsoft Active Directory, featuring the world's first and only accurate Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier -

We developed this unique tool to empower organizations worldwide to be able to trustworthily (accurately) identify and eliminate privilege escalation paths in their foundational Active Directory environments, enabling them to eliminate the #1 threat to organizational cyber security.  

Today, I will be sharing additional technical details on this paramount cyber security tool, which is the world's only tooling that can accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory.

(We trust the world understands the meaning of the English word - "only".)

 

Everest Beckons - Accurate Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identification

The cardinal tenet in the identification of privilege escalation paths in Active Directory is accuracy. 

The only way to achieve accuracy in escalation path identification involves identifying privilege escalation paths based on an accurate assessment of access entitlements in Active Directory, which in turn involves and requires the determination of effective permissions in Active Directory.

Specifically, in order to be able to accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, one first needs to accurately determine access entitlements on possibly thousands of objects in Active Directory, which involves accurately determining effective permissions on thousands of objects in Active Directory, and that is extremely difficult to accomplish, let alone automate.

As such, we are the only company in the world that actually has a solution that can accurately determine effective permissions in Active Directory. We are also the only company in the world that can accurately determine effective permissions on thousands of objects in Active Directory and determine exactly who has what privileged access, where and how in Active Directory. Even then, being further able to identify privilege escalation paths based on all assessed access entitlements in Active Directory is no easy feat.

For years now, even we had not attempted it because we knew just how difficult it is to accomplish, let alone automate it, considering how diverse Active Directory environments can actually be.

You see, when you build an automated solution, it needs to be able to work in every possible environment, ranging from a small business' 100 user account single-domain environment to an enterprise's 100,000 user account multi-domain environment spread across multiple continents.  

Consequently, for years now, organizations had been using and relying on a particular amateur cyber security solution, that albeit substantially and dangerously inaccurate, nonetheless seemed to have become the de-facto standard to identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, and I can only conjecture that the reason is that 99% of IT personnel (e.g. Domain Admins, SysAdmins etc.), self-proclaimed Active Directory Security "experts" and CISOs worldwide (to this day) do not even seem to know or understand the most fundamental fact about Active Directory Security.  

In October of 2024, it came to our attention that even official guidance from the global intelligence community (five eyes) was recommending the use of this amateur cyber security solution, and we realized that something had to be urgently done, lest even government and intelligence agencies worldwide end up operating on dangerously inaccurate cyber security insights, reliance upon which could result in their swift and colossal compromise, a situation that could endanger U.S. national security and the national security of all countries that were relying on such (inaccurate) guidance.

Everest Conquered - Building an Accurate AD Privilege Escalation Path Identifier

With the above concern in mind, we decided to take on our biggest challenge yet, (and one may want to keep in mind that over the years, we have taken on and solved some of the biggest challenges in organizational cyber security,) and set out to architect and develop the world's first and only accurate privilege escalation path identification tooling for Microsoft Active Directory.

It took our entire development team, led by myself, almost a year to architect and develop this tool, and it undoubtedly has been the single biggest technical challenge that we have taken on to date. 

To appreciate the magnitude of this problem, you have to understand that what is involved here is building an automated solution that can not only accurately calculate effective permissions on thousands of objects, but then also take an ocean of determined resultant access entitlements, and determine (potentially hundreds of thousands) of privilege escalation paths leading to one or more targets in Active Directory, and do so with complete accuracy, in any Active Directory environment.

We also gave ourselves a difficult stretch goal of not just being able to accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, but also, for each and every single identified path, be able to pinpoint the exact security permission in the ACL of the target Active Directory object, that was entitling a subject to a specific privilege escalation path.

None of this was easy. In fact, it was the most difficult technical challenge we have conquered (, which is also why you'll see a picture of a mountain climber in the Mission Accomplished section on this technical page,) and it was the equivalent of trying to scale Mount Everest in the real-world.

All said and done, we knew that failure was not an option (, and as such that word doesn't exist in our dictionary at Paramount Defenses,) and the entire team worked tirelessly, laser-focused on the mission, in dark rooms, completely cut off from the Internet, and by the end of November 2025, we had successfully built the world's only cyber security solution that can accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, and also includes source-identification (, our stretch-goal).

We then spent well over a hundred days, thoroughly testing every aspect of the tooling, as we always do, and after a hundred days of thorough testing, we signed-off on the final release version, with March 10, 2026 decided as our release date, almost coinciding with our twentieth anniversary.

On March 10, 2026, we released the world's first and only accurate privilege escalation path identification solution for Microsoft Active Directory, so that thousands of organizations worldwide, including thousands of $ Billion business organizations, and thousands of government and national security/intelligence agencies across a hundred countries, could finally trustworthily (i.e. accurately) identify and eliminate privilege escalation paths in their foundational Active Directory deployments.

If you can find a more important cyber security problem to solve than this one, do let me know.

A Glimpse into the Technicalities Involved 

The remainder of this post is focused on the technicals of this tooling, which may be of interest to experts in this field, and ideally should be understood by all IT personnel and CISOs in the field.

The field of Active Directory security is vast, and consequently, describing as well as understanding the technical innards of such a tool requires a certain level of subject matter expertise. That said, I'll do my best to describe the technical innards such that everyone in the field can get a sense of what is actually involved, and how difficult it is to accurately accomplish.

A Brief Overview of Active Directory Privilege Escalation

Active Directory Privilege Escalation is an exploitation technique in which perpetrators identify and exploit unauthorized access specified inside the ACLs of Active Directory objects to compromise them and escalate privilege.

It lets perpetrators compromise domain user accounts, domain computer accounts, security groups and other Active Directory content, including all privileged users and groups in Active Directory. 

The compromise of a single Active Directory privileged user or group is sufficient to obtain complete command and control over the entire Active Directory and is tantamount to complete compromise.

Active Directory Privilege Escalation is made possible due to the presence of unauthorized effective permissions that result from the security permissions provisioned on Active Directory objects.

To learn more, you can read an Executive Summary of Active Directory Privilege Escalation.

The Keys to Correctly Identifying Privilege Escalation Paths in Active Directory

The keys to correctly (accurately) identifying privilege escalation paths in Active Directory lie in correctly assessing cumulative access entitlements in Active Directory, and the keys to correctly assessing cumulative access entitlements in Active Directory lie in being able to accurately calculate effective permissions in Active Directory.

Saliently, there are specific administrative tasks/operations that can be enacted on Active Directory objects, such as domain user accounts, domain computer accounts, domain security groups etc., wherein the enactment of such tasks gives the security principal that is able to enact such a task on a target, the ability to own (/compromise) that target, and any security principal that can perform these tasks on their various targets can in effect escalate their privilege to the specific target.

The following are examples of such administrative tasks/operations -

1. Resetting the password of a domain user account
2. Resetting the password of a domain computer account
3. Changing the membership of a domain security group
4. Adding or removing Self as a member to a domain security group
5. Modifying the permissions of an Active Directory domain account, group or any object
6. Changing the ownership of an Active Directory domain account, group or any object

Thus, any security principal that can enact the aforementioned tasks on an Active Directory object can in effect escalate their privilege on to that Active Directory object.

Consequently, to correctly identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, one needs to be able to accurately determine/identify exactly who can enact all such tasks in and across Active Directory, AND to be able to do that, one needs to be able to accurately determine effective permissions on objects in Active Directory.   

It thus follows that the keys to being able correctly identify privilege escalation paths lie in being able to accurately assess cumulative access entitlements in Active Directory, which in turn involves accurately determining effective permissions in and across Active Directory. 

You can learn more about what Active Directory Effective Permissions are here and here. They are absolutely fundamental to Active Directory Security and in all native Microsoft tooling, there are referred to as Effective Access.

A Real-World Example

This topic is perhaps best understood with a real-world example, so let us consider the following -

Objective - Identify all privilege escalation paths leading to the CEO's domain user account.

 

Setup - A real-world organization's Active Directory, comprised of multiple domains, with say twenty thousand domain user accounts, twenty thousand domain computer accounts, ten thousand domain security groups, and MILLIONS of security permissions in Active Directory, including hundreds of thousands (due to inheritance) of Deny permissions.

 

Side-Note for Amateurs - We are not talking about trying to find privilege escalation paths on an Active Directory object based on a mere three permissions in the ACL, of which none is a Deny permission, in some novice/junior sys-admin's home lab setup.

 

Possibilities - Technically, the possibilities here are wide ranging. At best, in a highly secure environment, there might at most be a handful of Domain Admin equivalent accounts that can enact ops that could take-over the CEO's account, and the same set of individuals who could also do the same on each other's accounts (due to AdminSDHolder.) At worst, you could have a situation wherein a single mis-configured permission could grant Authenticated Users or Everyone modify access on the CEO's account, and now you're looking at a situation wherein forty thousand (plus one) accounts have a direct privilege escalation path to the CEO's account alone, and scores of accounts with both unrestricted and restricted (delegated) admin access in Active Directory, have several privilege escalation paths on to each one of these forty thousand accounts. That's the spectrum of possibilities we're talking about here, to be predominantly viewed from the perspective of trying to automate this identification process.

 

Side-note 2 for Amateurs - This is a production environment, wherein organizational IT/cyber security personnel have actually put in the effort to lockdown access in their Active Directory, including by employing Deny permissions, so you don't have a setup where there are no Deny permissions. Also, in each ACL, there could be multiple Deny permissions, explicit and inherited, denying access for some of the very groups that have also been allowed access to the same object in the same ACL. In other words, there's considerable real-world complexity to deal with, unlike in a simple lab setup.    

 

Specifics and Size - You can assume that over the years, a fair amount of administrative delegation has been done in this Active Directory. For instance, responsibilities for identity management, helpdesk functions and access for AD-integrated apps are all adequately provisioned via scores of inheritable permissions across the domain, in every domain. You can also assume that at least basic common-sense barriers have been put in place via Deny permissions, so you're looking at millions of security permissions in the Active Directory, including say 76 security permissions just in the ACL of the CEO's domain user account.    

Innards

With the above setup in place, the process of identifying privilege escalation paths to the CEO's domain user account begins by examining the ACL of the CEO's domain user account.

As mentioned above, there are 76 security permissions in this ACL, of which 60 are of type Allow and 16 are of type Deny, and of which, 24 are explicit in nature and 52 have been inherited.

They include several conflicting permissions. For example, the Help Desk Team group has been granted the Reset Password extended right via an inheritable Allow permission. This Help Desk Team group contains two nested groups, one of which, the IT Help Desk (Contractors) group, represents contractors. This group IT Help Desk (Contractors) is a member of the IT All Contractors group, which in turn is a member of the All Contractors group, and there is an inheritable Deny permission in the CEO's account's ACL denying the All Contractors group All Extended Rights. This is merely one example. There are many such conflicting permissions in the CEO's account's ACL.

The reason this simple example is so pertinent and important to consider is that whilst virtually all other tools that claim to analyze Active Directory security, and/or identify privilege escalation paths, will take into account the Allow permissions granting the Help Desk Team the Reset Password extended right, none of them will evaluate or consider the impact of the Deny permission granted to the All Contractors group, which as seen above, due to an indirect (nested) group membership, will not actually permit any contractor who is a member of the IT Help Desk Team (via the nested IT Help Desk (Contractors) group) to actually be able to reset the CEO's account's password.

In essence, the very first step in this process is to take into account the collective impact of all the security permissions (i.e. both Allow and Deny permissions) specified in the ACL protecting the target object to identify which security principals do in fact have sufficient effective access to actually be able to enact technical/administrative operations on this account and escalate privilege.

This simple yet paramount determination is what is known as calculating Active Directory Effective Permissions i.e. calculating the actual resultant access that is allowed on an Active Directory object.

Consequently, the very first step involves being able to accurately calculate effective permissions on the CEO's domain user account, and this in itself is no easy feat. In fact, it is one of the most difficult challenges in all of Active Directory security and organizational cyber security, even though it is absolutely fundamental and paramount to the security of every single object in Active Directory.

Side-note - There is also only one tool in the world that can accurately calculate effective permissions in Active Directory, i.e. our Active Directory Effective Permissions Calculator. 

Thus, the very first step is to determine who actually has sufficient effective permissions on the CEO's domain user account to be able to enact admin tasks/ops that can be used to escalate privilege on to this account, and this being a domain user account, those tasks are as follows - 

1. Reset the domain user account's password
2. Change the security permission on the domain user account
3. Change the ownership of the domain user account 

The first task is the primary avenue to escalating privilege on to a domain user account. The second task gives you the ability to grant oneself (or anyone) sufficient effective access to be able to enact the first task. The third task, gives you the ability to acquire ownership of the object, which in turn, gives you implicit Write DACL i.e. Modify Permissions on the object, which then can be used to grant oneself (or anyone) sufficient effective access to be able to enact the first task on the account.

 

Side-note - The list of admin tasks/operations that can be enacted to escalate privilege onto an Active Directory object are specific to the class of the object. For instance, on a domain security group, in lieu of #1 above, the two tasks would be 1) Change the membership of the group, and 2) Add/remove oneself as a member to the group. Similarly, akin to the above, tasks # 3 and #4 in the case of a security group would be Change the security permission on the domain security group and Change the ownership of the security group.  

Thus, the very first thing that Gold Finger does in the process of determining privilege escalation paths is correctly calculate Active Directory Effective Permissions on the target of the determination, to determine who can enact tasks/operations that can be used to escalate privilege to the target.

 

Side-note - To reiterate, that is merely the very first step in this vital determination, and there is not a tool in the world that can accomplish even this very first step accurately, so as you can imagine, any tool that claims to be able to identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory is in actuality simply not even able to complete the very first step accurately.

 

 

Now, let us assume that having accurately determined effective permissions on the target object, we have determined that a total of 56 security principals, including 30 domain user accounts, 4 domain computer accounts, 21 domain security groups and 1 foreign security principal (FSP, e.g. Anonymous Logon) are actually able to escalate privilege to the CEO's domain user account.

The next step in the process is to then proceed to accurately calculate effective permissions on each one of these 55 security principals and identify exactly who can escalate privilege on to each one of them, considering the privilege escalation tasks/operations that are specific to their class. 

Side-note - Even though we have a total of 56 security principals that can escalate their privilege on to the CEO's domain user account, one of them is the FSP Anonymous Logon. We do not need to identify any escalation paths on to this FSP, because there are none to identify, in that one does not need any credentials to come across as Anonymous Logon.

To reiterate, having determined the identities of all security principals that have a direct privilege escalation path on to the target, the next step is to iteratively recurse this exact process on each* one of these security principals.

In essence, this elemental process, primarily involving the fundamental accurate determination of effective permissions on numerous Active Directory objects to identify which enactable privilege escalation admin tasks/operations are entitled, to whom and how, needs to be recursed on each one of them until such point that there are no more security principals that have a privilege escalation path to the target under consideration, i.e. other than those that have already been identified as having a path to the target, or on/to whom we have already identified privilege escalation paths. It is at that point that the intricate process of accurately identifying privilege escalation paths to a specific object in Active Directory is considered complete.

At this point, what one has is an inverted privilege escalation path tree, wherein the root node is the target of the escalation, and every child node is a security principal that has one or more escalation paths to the parent node, and each edge in the tree represents one or more escalation paths representing the operations/tasks involved in the escalation(s), and there certainly can be more than one escalation path leading from one security principal to another.

Example - A user account, say John Smith, could have both sufficient Add/Remove Self as Member effective permissions as well as sufficient Modify Permissions effective permissions on a domain security group. In this case, there are two privilege escalation paths leading from John's account to this security group, so the edge would represent both these escalation paths, and be duly annotated as such.

Summary

In closing, based on what we have considered above, there could theoretically be anywhere from zero to thousands of privilege escalation paths leading to a specified target in Active Directory, and the only way to accurately identify them involves accurately determining access entitlements on possibly thousands of objects in Active Directory (, which involves accurately calculating effective permissions on thousands of Active Directory objects and mapping them to admin tasks/ops that can be used to escalate privilege,) and then taking this vast amount of accurately assessed access entitlement data and precisely generating a privilege escalation path tree.  

Our unique Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier is the only tooling the world that can accurately identify such paths, based on the accurate determination of effective permissions on as many Active Directory objects as may be involved, whether it be one or it be fifty thousand objects.

In Closing

That is what it takes to accurately determine privilege escalation paths in Active Directory. 

To then attempt to build an automated solution that can completely automate this entire process, with 100% accuracy, and no room for error, one that can be used/deployed in any production Active Directory deployment in the world, no matter how simple or complex it may be, is then undoubtedly, an extremely difficult undertaking.

It requires the discipline of a United States Marine and the expertise and precision of a proficient and experienced heart surgeon to conquer such a massive, complexity-laden technical challenge.

We are pleased to have made it as easy as touching a button in any Active Directory in the world. 

Consequently, today, any organization that wishes to do so, can instantly and accurately identify and eliminate all privilege escalation paths in their foundational Active Directory, and subsequently maintain a secure foundational Active Directory deployment, which is the bedrock of their business. 

This unique high-value capability too embodies our innovative industry-wide recognized patented technology and our effective permissions calculation, privileged access assessment and privilege escalation path identification cyber security solutions for Active Directory remain unrivaled.

You can watch a demo of this unique tool here. At the touch of a single button, Gold Finger performs hundreds of thousands of operations under the hood to accurately determine exactly who has what privilege escalation paths to a specified target, and how, thereby finally empowering organizations to easily identify and eliminate all privilege escalation paths in Active Directory.

It is only a million miles ahead of any other tooling in the world that claims to be able to identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, and it is the only one that can do so accurately.

A simple litmus test that can prove how accurate any such tooling is, can be found here.

I shouldn't have to say a word more, so I won't.

Thanks,

Sanjay

PS: Pardon the delay - We have been meaning to pen this post for several weeks now, but have been extremely busy, apart from our immense responsibilities to our customers across the world, completing the development of one more high-impact product, to be unveiled in just a few weeks.

PS 2 - 

30,000 Hours of Experience

BTW, as many of you know, as former Microsoft Program Manager for Active Directory Security, I had researched and penned Microsoft's official 400-page whitepaper on the subject, titled "Best Practices for Delegating Administration in Active Directory", back in 2004. I also single-handedly performed a risk assessment of Microsoft's own global Active Directory deployment back in 2005.

Since then, I have also penned numerous posts on this subject, and here are just a few -

1. The World's #1 Cyber Security Risk - Active Directory Privilege Escalation (2013)
2. Is the Whole World Sitting on a Ticking Bomb? (2014)
3. The OPM Breach Trillion $ Privileged Access Insight (2015)
4. A Letter to Benjaim Delpy re Mimikatz and Active Directory Security (2016)
5. Active Directory Privilege Escalation - A Trillion Dollar Example (2017)
6. How to Correctly Identify Shadow Admins in Active Directory (2017)
7. How to Easily Identify Sneaky Persistence in Active Directory (2017)
8. How to Correctly Identify Stealthy Admins in Active Directory (2017)
9. Active Directory ACLs - Actual Attack and Defense (2017)
10. AdminSDHolder (2017)
11. Active Directory Effective Permissions (2017)
12. Who needs WMDs Today? (2020)
13. Active Directory Privilege Escalation (2021)
14. Active Directory Privilege Escalation (2023)

In short, as Microsoft's first technical subject matter expert on the subject, I have been doing this for twenty five years now and by now have more than 25,000 hours of experience in this vital subject, and I've also architected the world's most advanced and capable Active Directory Security Tooling, so I know what I'm talking about.

Introducing Gold Finger 10.0 for Microsoft Active Directory, featuring the World's Only Accurate Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Earlier today, we announced the availability of Gold Finger 10.0 for Microsoft Active Directory, featuring the world's first and only accurate Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier -

Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier

From the United States of America to the Middle East, and from the United Kingdom to Australia, Microsoft Active Directory is the foundation of cyber security at thousands of business and government organizations worldwide.

The security and defense of Active Directory deployments at governments and businesses worldwide is paramount for foundational security, operational autonomy, organizational privacy, national security and national sovereignty.

Our unique, innovative, unrivaled Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier will empower organizations worldwide to be able to identify and eliminate privilege escalation paths in their foundational Active Directory domains, thereby helping them eliminate the #1 threat to their Active Directory domains and to their organizational cyber security.  

The Number #1 Threat to Active Directory and Organizational Cyber Security

The number #1 threat to organizations operating on Active Directory is Active Directory Privilege Escalation because it provides perpetrators the opportunity to gain privileged access and obtain command and control (C2) at an organization.

History is witness that virtually all major cyber security breaches in the last decade, including Snowden, the Sony Hack, the OPM Breach, the Maersk Breach, the SolarWinds Breach, the Colonial Pipeline Hack and several others, as well as the recent Microsoft Breach, all involved targeting Active Directory and employed Active Directory Privilege Escalation.

Consequently, unmitigated this treat continues to pose a clear and present danger to Active Directory deployments.

The ability of organizations to mitigate this critical threat lies in the ability to be able to accurately identify and eliminate privilege escalation paths in their foundational Active Directory deployments.

Unfortunately, the accurate determination of privilege escalation paths is extremely difficult, time-intensive and prone to error, making it very difficult for organizations to accurately identify and eliminate these privilege escalation paths. It is very difficult because it requires and involves the accurate determination of effective permissions in Active Directory.

Today there exist several amateur tools from several vendors but none of them can accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory. Unfortunately, reliance on such tools delivers inaccurate insights, and organizations that rely on such inaccurate insights may be operating on a dangerously false sense of security and be vulnerable to compromise.

The World's First and Only Accurate Solution

Today we are pleased to introduce the world’s first and only accurate privilege escalation path identifier for Active Directory.

Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier is the world’s only solution/tooling that can accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, because it is the world’s only tooling that bases its determinations on the accurate assessment of effective permissions (/effective access) in Active Directory.

Our unique, innovative solution can accurately and instantly identify exactly who has what privilege escalation paths to any object in an Active Directory domain. In addition, it can also pinpoint the exact underlying security permissions in Active Directory ACLs that enable each one of these paths, empowering organizations to easily eliminate all identified paths.

Armed with such valuable insights, organizations can quickly and effortlessly identify and eliminate all privilege escalation paths in their foundational Active Directory deployments, thereby substantially enhancing foundational cyber security, and virtually eliminating the world’s #1 attack vector from their environments.

Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier embodies two decades of innovative research and development and is powered by the company’s unique Microsoft-endorsed, patented access assessment technology. It is the world's only tooling that can accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, and it does so at a button's touch.

To learn more, please visit - www.paramountdefenses.com/products/active-directory-privilege-escalation-path-identifier.

Details to Follow

Gold Finger 10.0 also includes a new contemporary user-interface and several capability enhancements in all of its tools.

In days to come, we will share additional technical details about our new tooling, the Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier, as well as about the various capability enhancements across our entire Gold Finger Suite toolset.

We look forward to helping organizations worldwide secure and defend their foundational Active Directory deployments.

Best wishes,
Sanjay

Amateur Hour is About to End in Active Directory Security

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On March 10, 2026, at 0830 hours EDT U.S., we will be making a small announcement that will impact global security -

Amateur hour is about to end in the paramount Active Directory Security space. Stay tuned.

Best wishes,

Sanjay.

The American Defense Industrial Complex operates on Active Directory

Folks,

From the U.S. Department of Defense to the Israeli Defense Forces, Microsoft to Nvidia, and Lockheed Martin to Palantir, today virtually the entire American Defense Industrial Complex operates on Microsoft Active Directory.

In fact, the entire United States Government, as well as the Fortune 100 and Wall Street also operate on Active Directory.

For those who may not know, Active Directory is one of the most important and trustworthy foundational technologies ever built, and it provides two paramount imperatives that the Cloud cannot - operational autonomy and organizational privacy.

Consequently, Active Directory lies at the very foundation of national security, defense and corporate security worldwide.

The National Security Agency Agrees

The stated mission of NSA in cybersecurity is to prevent and eradicate threats to U.S. national security systems with a focus on the Defense Industrial Base and the improvement of its weapons’ security.

Active Directory Security is so important to global security, that just last fortnight, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) issued joint guidance on how to mitigate Active Directory attacks, and I quote -

"Active Directory is the most widely used authentication and authorization solution in enterprise Information Technology (IT) networks globally." 

"Like numerous other networks, Active Directory is used in many Department of Defense and Defense Industrial Base networks as a critical component for managing identities and access,” 

“This makes it an attractive target for malicious actors to attempt to steal the proverbial ‘keys to the kingdom. Taking steps to properly defend AD from these common and advanced techniques will detect and prevent adversary activities and protect sensitive data from determined malicious cyber actors.”

To state it as simply as one can, the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States of America just confirmed not only what we've been saying for years, but also the paramount importance of what it is we do at Paramount Defenses. 

You see, the number one way to steal the proverbial Keys to the Kingdom that the NSA is referring to is Active Directory Privilege Escalation, and in fact we had released the underlying technical facts in The Paramount Brief way back (2014).

I wonder what took the NSA so long. We've been saying this for a decade - 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

This is Paramount

The accurate assessment of privileged access in Active Directory is absolutely paramount to organizational cyber security.

As every cyber security professional, Domain Admin and CISO worth his/her salt knows well, the most important (the #1) measure in all of organizational cyber security and in Active Directory security is the attainment of Least Privilege Access (LPA) in Active Directory, which involves accurately assessing and then locking-down privileged access in Active Directory, and one simply cannot do so without the ability to accurately assess privileged access in Active Directory. 

Decision Support (aka Proof)

At the heart of both the SolarWinds Breach and the Colonial Pipeline Hack lay privileged access in Active Directory.

Both these attacks could've been prevented if only organizations had attained and maintained LPA in Active Directory. 

Here's why / consider this - the Top-5 ways of escalating in privilege in Active Directory are i) DC Sync eff-perms / WD eff-perms on domain root, ii) WD eff-perms on AdminSDHolder, iii) CR-Reset Password eff-perms on any AD admin account, iv) WP-member eff-perms on any AD admin group, and v) WP - GP Link and GP Options eff-perms on the default DC OU.

Anyone who has any of these eff-perms in AD owns the organization, and can completely destroy it, should they so desire, so at an absolute minimum*, assessing and locking-down the above eff-perms domain-wide is absolutely paramount.

*Oh, and this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Consider the following - 

Anyone and everyone who has { CR-Reset Password or WD or WO } eff-perms on any AD user account in the domain can own that account in one second, anyone who has { WP-Member or WD or WO } eff-perms on any AD group in the domain can control that group in one second (and access everything it protects), anyone who has { WD or WO } eff-perms on an(y) OU in the domain can own every* object in that OU, easily escalate privilege and/or control and/or destroy everything in it.

Pro Tip for Amateurs - Count the number of times I've said eff perms above, because it is NOT perms, but eff-perms (aka Active Directory Effective Permissions) that control everything in AD. Permissions analysis is almost useless. 

Organizations that do not know who has what eff-perms in their AD are dangerously operating in the proverbial dark.

Extremely Difficult

The accurate determination of access entitlements, i.e. who has what privileged access where and how, in Active Directory is extremely difficult and error-prone, and likely one of the biggest challenges in organizational cyber security today.

It is extremely difficult because it involves analyzing millions of individual access control specifications that cumulatively impact resultant access, and thus is involves meticulously connecting millions of dots with absolutely zero room for error.

There is no room for error, because like performing heart surgery or screening baggage at airports, even a single error could result in an unmitigated privilege escalation path that could be used to completely destroy an entire organization.

The process is akin to finding a thousand unique needles in a haystack the size of One World Trade Center, New York, wherein in order to ensure security, it is paramount that each and every single needle in the entire haystack be found. 

Mission Accomplished

For anyone who may not yet know, there is one and only cyber security solution in the entire world that can accurately assess privileged access in Active Directory - our unique, unrivaled, all-American, Microsoft-endorsed Gold Finger.

Gold Finger is the only cyber security solution in the world that can accurately assess access entitlements i.e. who has what privileged access in Active Directory, based on the accurate determination of effective permissions in Active Directory.

Let there be no ambiguity about that cardinal technical fact, none whatsoever. Although there are over twenty solutions that claim to be able to assess privileged access in Active Directory, not even one of them can do so accurately, because there is one and only correct way to accurately assess privileged access in Active Directory and that involves the accurate determination of Active Directory Effective Permissions, which is extremely difficult, and none of those solutions do so.

Not a single one of them.

As such, the method and system for the accurate determination of who has what access entitlements in Active Directory, including of course privileged access, and privilege escalation paths, is governed by our patent, U.S. Patent 8429708.

The Bible of Access Assessment

I should also mention this is no ordinary patent. It is the Bible of how to accurately assess access in an IT system, wherein access is controlled using ACLs, and today, over 75 patents from many of the world's top cyber security companies cite it, including Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, VMWare, McAfee, CyberArk, FireEye, Dell, VMWare, Palantir and others.

Our patented, Microsoft-endorsed accurate effective access assessment capabilities are embodied in our Gold Finger, Gold Finger Mini and Gold Finger 007G solutions, are unique in their ability to enable organizations to fulfill this paramount objective and over the last decade, from the U.S. DoD to the United Nations and from the U.S. Treasury to several Fortune 100 companies, they have been instrumental in helping so many important organizations attain and maintain LPA in AD.

Simply Unrivaled  (F-35)

To give the world an idea of just how capable and superlative our access assessment technology is, consider this -

Gold Finger can accurately assess exactly who has what privileged access, where and how, domain-wide in any Active Directory domain in the world, comprised of thousands of objects, within just minutes, and at the touch of a button. 

To put that in perspective, in less time than the Generals in the U.S Military can brief the U.S. Secretary of Defense as to the state of cyber security of their respective forces, or for that matter in less time than the CEO of Microsoft has an hourly meeting with his top cyber security experts, Gold Finger can find out exactly who has not just the Keys to the Kingdom, but also who has the keys to every single door in the kingdom, in every Active Directory domain in the U.S. Dept. of Defense.

In fact, we recently offered to give away up to one hundred million dollars in software to any and every organization or professional who could provably show us even one tool in the world that can do what Gold Finger's privileged access assessment capabilities can, and guess how many organizations/professionals have taken us up on the offer thus far? 

Zero! Need one say more?

In Closing

In closing, I will only add that at Paramount Defenses we continue to be laser-focused on Active Directory security because it is absolutely paramount to the national security of the United States of America, and that of 100+ countries worldwide. 

You see, there can be no national security without a government having operational autonomy and organizational privacy, and only Active Directory makes these two imperatives possible. Fortunately, today every organization in the world that wishes to do so can easily attain and maintain least privilege access (LPA) in their foundational Active Directory domains, thereby measurably eliminating 99% of avenues of privilege escalation to the "Keys to the Kingdom" in Active Directory.

That's all for now.

Best wishes,
Sanjay.

Which is the most powerful country in the world today?

Folks,

In light of current geopolitical events, I'd like to ask a very simple question, one that the entire world ought to consider, posed above.

Is it -

A. The United States of America

B. The United Kingdom

C. Russia

D. China

E. Some other country (If so, which one?)

I'll leave you with a hint - based on current geopolitical events it appears it's not the country you think it is, and it's not the country that thinks it is the most powerful country in the world. (You see, another country's clout seems to be running it.)

To the wise, I needn't say more (, so I won't.)

Thanks,
Sanjay