ADCS Privilege Escalation, Detection, and Remediation

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Presented at BSides San Diego 2026 by

Alyssa Snow

Kaitlyn Wimberley

Could an attacker gain elevated privileges in your environment by exploiting Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS)? While defenders often focus heavily on traditional vectors like Kerberoasting, lateral movement, and misconfigured group memberships, AD CS has become one of the most critical privilege-escalation vectors in modern enterprise networks. This training demystifies how attackers exploit AD CS for privilege escalation and provides defenders with clear, actionable steps for auditing, monitoring, and hardening ADCS infrastructure.