🖥 Building an Active Directory Lab 🔐

In this guide, we will build an Active Directory environment in a virtualized lab and see how features can be exploited to hack Windows users. Active Directory(AD) is Microsoft’s service to manage Windows domain networks. 95% of Fortune 100 companies implement AD into their networks. If you work in IT in any way, shape, or form… you need to know how AD works.

Bypass the paywall with this link.

The way you can use the same set of credentials, to log into any Windows machine within your given institution, is done though Active Directory. AD can easily span whole corporations and campus’s, acting as a “phone book” for Windows desktops, printers, and other computers that need authentication services. For our purposes, our AD will span one server and X number of workstations.

For security researchers, it’s darn important to know how AD works and it’s weaknesses. This article builds off what was done in my last guide about building up a lab. I’ve had a lot of difficultly installing an AD within VirtualBox. Instead we’ll be using VMware Workstation 15 Player.

I’ve found both VirtualBox and VMware are both useful for different things(more like some stuff will break on one but not the other), and here is one such instance. If you’re brand new to all this, after these guides, you’ll know how to you use two very useful hypervisors! Installing VMware just consists of running the installer.

Table of Contents