Hybrid Identity Is Making AD More Vulnerable

Active Directory (AD) remains the authentication backbone for more than 90% of Fortune 1000 companies, but its growing importance has brought expanding risk. As organizations embrace hybrid and cloud environments, AD now spans on-premises domain controllers, Azure AD Connect, and diverse authentication protocols. This complexity creates fertile ground for attackers—and AD has become their ultimate target. Compromise AD, and the entire network is effectively theirs.

Attackers pursue AD because it grants high-value privileges with minimal detection. Once inside, they can create accounts, alter permissions, disable protections, and move laterally while appearing to perform normal administrative tasks. The 2024 Change Healthcare breach illustrated the stakes: after exploiting an unprotected server and pivoting to AD, attackers escalated privileges and crippled operations, exposed patient data, and forced multimillion-dollar ransom payments.

Well-known attack methods continue to succeed. Golden Ticket attacks forge long-lasting domain credentials. DCSync enables password hash extraction directly from domain controllers. Kerberoasting abuses weak service account passwords. Hybrid identity expands these risks further, offering intruders opportunities to abuse synchronization paths, legacy protocols, and OAuth tokens.

Ultimately, AD’s biggest weaknesses stem from credential issues—weak passwords, over-privileged service accounts, cached credentials, poor visibility, and stale access. With new AD vulnerabilities emerging regularly, organizations must adopt modern, layered defences focused on credential protection, privilege management, and continuous monitoring to keep attackers at bay.

References:

https://thehackernews.com/2025/11/active-directory-under-siege-why.html

https://specopssoft.com/blog/active-directory-attack-paths/?utm_source=thehackernews&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=thehackernews_referral&utm_content=article

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