An organization’s data is one of its most valuable assets—and a prime target for cyberattackers, who prove time and again that their victims will pay large ransom sums to get exfiltrated data back. According to Semperis’ 2024 Ransomware Risk Report, 78% of organizations that were hit by a ransomware attack…
Successfully recovering from an attack on Active Directory is a race against the clock. Organizations that have been through this worst-case scenario know that being able to recover your AD is just the start: The time to recover AD is a significant factor in the extent of the damage, a…
Maintaining business continuity during and after a cyberattack has become a chief strategic objective, not just for enterprise cybersecurity, but for IT and business leadership as well. Effective Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR), including a documented Active Directory backup and recovery plan, is crucial to strong operational resilience. Identity…
For organizations of any size, managing hybrid identity security across on-premises and cloud environments can be challenging, and Purple Knight has long been trusted to expose risky misconfigurations. Lightning Intelligence, a SaaS security posture assessment, automates scanning to provide continuous monitoring without the need for periodic manual assessments. Small and…
CISOs in the financial sector have another new regulatory challenge to contend with. Earlier this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted new cybersecurity incident response and disclosure rules, demanding new approaches to disaster recovery planning. For affected organizations, the new SEC Regulation S-P requirements demand a new…
In a Zerologon exploit, an attacker with access to a network takes advantage of a critical flaw in the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC) to impersonate any computer, including a domain controller (DC). This flaw is known as Zerologon—a vulnerability that can give attackers full control over a domain. What is…
Active Directory remains a critical infrastructure component for managing network resources, login credentials, and user authentication. Yet its centrality makes it a prime target for cyberattacks. One such evolving cyberattack is password spraying, a threat that’s gained in complexity in recent years. Password spraying attacks stand out due to their…
Security Identifier (SID) History injection is a sophisticated cyberattack vector that targets Windows Active Directory environments. This attack exploits the SID History attribute, which is intended to maintain user access rights during migrations from one domain to another. By injecting malicious SID values into this attribute, an attacker can escalate…
LDAP injection represents a formidable cyberattack vector, targeting the authentication and authorization mechanisms within your Active Directory environment. By exploiting improper input validation, attackers can manipulate LDAP statements and potentially gain unauthorized access to your directory service. Semperis cybersecurity and identity security experts have a deep understanding of LDAP injection,…
My friends know I’m a movie buff. Being also a mixed martial enthusiast, one of my all-time favorites is Fight Club, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s first novel. The story is about an identity crisis: rebelling against consumerism, trying to find truth and meaning in life, and becoming a “real” person…
Forest Druid is a free cyber attack path discovery tool for hybrid identity environments, such as Active Directory and Entra ID. Unlike traditional tools that map attack paths from the external perimeter inwards, Forest Druid focuses on protecting the most critical assets first. This method prioritizes identifying and securing Tier…
Our latest Purple Knight (PK) v4.2 release introduces fundamental changes, particularly concerning the new scoring calculation. Changing from a broader approach that considered all indicators, we’ve now zeroed in on the “failed” indicators, those that highlight genuine security threats in your environment. This shift aims to ensure that the overall…
Enterprise organizations with legacy Active Directory (AD) environments have a security problem. Their AD infrastructure has likely degraded over time and now harbors multiple security vulnerabilities because of inefficient architecture, multiple misconfigurations, and poorly secured legacy applications. Yet Active Directory migration and consolidation, especially involving a sprawling AD infrastructure, is…
Active Directory (AD) migration projects can be challenging and complex. Such projects involve the migration of users, groups, computers, and applications from one AD domain or forest to another. Careful planning and execution can help your migration team complete a successful AD migration, with minimal disruption to end users and…
Active Directory (AD) is the core identity store for many organizations. As such, AD has also become a major target for bad actors. If attackers gain access to AD, they gain access to any resources in the organization. In a hybrid on-prem/cloud scenario, which is common today, that includes access…
My friends know I’m a movie buff. Being also a mixed martial enthusiast, one of my all-time favorites is Fight Club, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s first novel. The story is about an identity crisis: rebelling against consumerism, trying to find truth and meaning in life, and becoming a “real” person…
By now, we’re all familiar with the need for an “assume breach” mindset where ransomware and other cyber threats are concerned. To better understand the necessity and challenges of this approach, we partnered with international market research firm Censuswide to ask organizations about their experience with ransomware attacks. What we…
Another day, another installment in the LockBit saga. The latest development in the never-ending story of cyber-criminal gangs versus law enforcement agencies is nearly worthy of its own TV series. But what does it mean for you—the person who must defend your organization and maintain its ability to operate amidst…
For organizations of any size, managing hybrid identity security across on-premises and cloud environments can be challenging, and Purple Knight has long been trusted to expose risky misconfigurations. Lightning Intelligence, a SaaS security posture assessment, automates scanning to provide continuous monitoring without the need for periodic manual assessments. Small and…
Password spraying detection is a vital ability for all organizations. In a password spraying attack, the attacker attempts to gain unauthorized access by trying a few common or weak passwords across many accounts rather than targeting a single account with many passwords. The idea is to test several passwords, hoping…
The SolarWinds breach in December 2020 signified a shift in the attack path for threat actors. Cyber threats increasingly target organizations’ cloud environments, typically Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), then move to on-premises Active Directory (AD)—or vice versa. This begs the question: How secure is your hybrid identity environment…
In a Zerologon exploit, an attacker with access to a network takes advantage of a critical flaw in the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC) to impersonate any computer, including a domain controller (DC). This flaw is known as Zerologon—a vulnerability that can give attackers full control over a domain. What is…
A recent report from the cybersecurity agencies in the Five Eyes alliance, including CISA and the NSA, urges organizations to strengthen the security of their Microsoft Active Directory (AD) deployments—a prime target for cyber attackers. The report describes dozens of attack techniques that attackers use to breach AD, including Kerberoasting.…
Cybersecurity agencies from the Five Eyes alliance, including CISA and the NSA, are urging organizations to strengthen security around Microsoft Active Directory (AD), a prime target for cyberattackers. The alliance’s recent report highlights more than a dozen tactics that threat actors use to exploit AD. Among these common techniques is…
In a Zerologon exploit, an attacker with access to a network takes advantage of a critical flaw in the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC) to impersonate any computer, including a domain controller (DC). This flaw is known as Zerologon—a vulnerability that can give attackers full control over a domain. What is…
Password spraying detection is a vital ability for all organizations. In a password spraying attack, the attacker attempts to gain unauthorized access by trying a few common or weak passwords across many accounts rather than targeting a single account with many passwords. The idea is to test several passwords, hoping…
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is an incoming European Union (EU) legislative framework aimed at fortifying the operational resilience of digital systems within the financial sector. All finance entities that operate in or with the EU need to achieve DORA compliance by early 2025, as do information and communication…
This month marked two milestones for Semperis. First, Deloitte recognized the company as one of the 100 fastest growing technology companies in North America and (for the third consecutive year) one of the top 10 fastest-growing tech companies in the greater New York area. Then, the company was listed for…
On behalf of the entire team, I’m excited to share that Semperis has been named to Inc.’s 2022 list of Best Workplaces. This annual list honors workplaces that are ranked highly by their employees on topics like benefits, trust in senior leadership, change management, and career development. I could not…
You won’t want to miss the newest episode of the Hybrid Identity Podcast (HIP)! In this session, I have the pleasure of talking with IDPro founder and Salesforce Senior VP of Identity Product Management Ian Glazer. What’s new at IDPro? IDPro has become the organization for identity pros looking for…
Our latest Purple Knight (PK) v4.2 release introduces fundamental changes, particularly concerning the new scoring calculation. Changing from a broader approach that considered all indicators, we’ve now zeroed in on the “failed” indicators, those that highlight genuine security threats in your environment. This shift aims to ensure that the overall…
In an ever-evolving digital landscape, organizations rely on robust identity protection solutions to safeguard sensitive data and maintain secure operations. For most enterprise businesses, that means protecting Active Directory and Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). But identity protection is just as vital for organizations that use Okta, a cloud-based identity…
A man-in-the-middle attack, also known as an MitM attack, is a form of eavesdropping in an attempt to steal sensitive data, such as user credentials. These attacks can pose a serious threat to organizations’ network security, particularly in environments that use Microsoft Active Directory (AD) for identity management. As Active…
My friends know I’m a movie buff. Being also a mixed martial enthusiast, one of my all-time favorites is Fight Club, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s first novel. The story is about an identity crisis: rebelling against consumerism, trying to find truth and meaning in life, and becoming a “real” person…
By now, we’re all familiar with the need for an “assume breach” mindset where ransomware and other cyber threats are concerned. To better understand the necessity and challenges of this approach, we partnered with international market research firm Censuswide to ask organizations about their experience with ransomware attacks. What we…
Organisations in the financial services sector in the European Union (EU) have less than a year to demonstrate Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) compliance. What is DORA, does it apply to your organisation, and how does DORA compliance intersect with one of today’s major cybersecurity concerns: identity threat detection and…
Key findings Within Microsoft Azure, the Directory.ReadWrite.All permission holds significant implications. This permission enables a multitude of actions, including user editing and access to all data within the directory. Sound risky? Some have argued that when employed in isolation, the permission poses no inherent risk. However, my research indicates that…
This article details a series of Semperis security research team discoveries that resulted in the ability to perform actions in Entra ID beyond expected authorization controls, based on analysis of the OAuth 2.0 scope (permissions). Our most concerning discovery involved the ability to add and remove users from privileged roles,…
By now, we’re all familiar with the need for an “assume breach” mindset where ransomware and other cyber threats are concerned. To better understand the necessity and challenges of this approach, we partnered with international market research firm Censuswide to ask organizations about their experience with ransomware attacks. What we…
In Active Directory (AD) environments, you can use Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to configure user rights. By using GPOs, you can easily enforce consistent user rights policies across all computers in the domain or organizational unit (OU). This capability makes it easier to manage and maintain user access control over…
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