T1558.003: Kerberoasting
Adversaries may abuse a valid Kerberos ticket-granting ticket (TGT) or sniff network traffic to obtain a ticket-granting service (TGS) ticket that may be vulnerable to Brute Force.[1][2]
Service principal names (SPNs) are used to uniquely identify each instance of a Windows service. To enable authentication, Kerberos requires that SPNs be associated with at least one service logon account (an account specifically tasked with running a service[3]).[4][5][6][7]
Adversaries possessing a valid Kerberos ticket-granting ticket (TGT) may request one or more Kerberos ticket-granting service (TGS) service tickets for any SPN from a domain controller (DC).[1][2] Portions of these tickets may be encrypted with the RC4 algorithm, meaning the Kerberos 5 TGS-REP etype 23 hash of the service account associated with the SPN is used as the private key and is thus vulnerable to offline Brute Force attacks that may expose plaintext credentials.[2][1] [7]
This same behavior could be executed using service tickets captured from network traffic.[2]
Cracked hashes may enable Persistence, Privilege Escalation, and Lateral Movement via access to Valid Accounts.[6]
Security context for executives and security teams
T1558.003: Kerberoasting describes Adversaries may abuse a valid Kerberos ticket-granting ticket (TGT) or sniff network traffic to obtain a ticket-granting service (TGS) ticket that may be vulnerable to [Brute Force](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1110).(Citation: Empire InvokeKerberoast Oct 2016)(Citation: AdSecurity Cracking Kerberos Dec 2015) Service principal names (SPNs) are used to uniquely identify each instance of a Windows service. To enable authentication, Kerberos requires that SPNs be associated with at least one service logon acco...
Executive priority
T1558.003: Kerberoasting is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate T1558.003: Kerberoasting by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (credential-access), supported platforms (Windows), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
- Identity, privilege, and authentication events
- Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry
Detection direction
- Validate whether T1558.003: Kerberoasting appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Kerberoasting
Adversaries may abuse a valid Kerberos ticket-granting ticket (TGT) or sniff network traffic to obtain a ticket-granting service (TGS) ticket that may be vulnerable to Brute Force.[1][2]
Service principal names (SPNs) are used to uniquely identify each instance of a Windows service. To enable authentication, Kerberos requires that SPNs be associated with at least one service logon account (an account specifically tasked with running a service[3]).[4][5][6][7]
Adversaries possessing a valid Kerberos ticket-granting ticket (TGT) may request one or more Kerberos ticket-granting service (TGS) service tickets for any SPN from a domain controller (DC).[1][2] Portions of these tickets may be encrypted with the RC4 algorithm, meaning the Kerberos 5 TGS-REP etype 23 hash of the service account associated with the SPN is used as the private key and is thus vulnerable to offline Brute Force attacks that may expose plaintext credentials.[2][1] [7]
This same behavior could be executed using service tickets captured from network traffic.[2]
Cracked hashes may enable Persistence, Privilege Escalation, and Lateral Movement via access to Valid Accounts.[6]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Related techniques
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1208 | Kerberoasting | Kerberoasting revoked by this object. |
| Enterprise | T1558 | Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets | This object subtechnique of Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets. |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0119: Indrik Spider
Indrik Spider is a Russia-based cybercriminal group that has been active since at least 2014. Indrik Spider initially started with the Dridex banking Trojan, and then by 2017 they began running ransomware operations using BitPaymer, WastedLocker, and Hades ransomware. Following U.S. sanctions and an indictment in 2019, Indrik Spider changed their tactics and diversified their toolset.[1][2][3]
G0046: FIN7
FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has been active since 2013. FIN7 has targeted the retail, restaurant, hospitality, software, consulting, financial services, medical equipment, cloud services, media, food and beverage, transportation, pharmaceutical, and utilities industries in the United States. A portion of FIN7 was operated out of a front company called Combi Security and often used point-of-sale malware for targeting efforts. Since 2020, FIN7 shifted operations to big game hunting (BGH), including use of REvil ransomware and their own Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), Darkside. FIN7 may be linked to the Carbanak Group, but multiple threat groups have been observed using Carbanak, leading these groups to be tracked separately.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
G0102: Wizard Spider
Wizard Spider is a Russia-based financially motivated threat group originally known for the creation and deployment of TrickBot since at least 2016. Wizard Spider possesses a diverse arsenal of tools and has conducted ransomware campaigns against a variety of organizations, ranging from major corporations to hospitals.[1][2][3]
S0692: SILENTTRINITY
SILENTTRINITY is an open source remote administration and post-exploitation framework primarily written in Python that includes stagers written in Powershell, C, and Boo. SILENTTRINITY was used in a 2019 campaign against Croatian government agencies by unidentified cyber actors.[1][2]
S0194: PowerSploit
PowerSploit is an open source, offensive security framework comprised of PowerShell modules and scripts that perform a wide range of tasks related to penetration testing such as code execution, persistence, bypassing anti-virus, recon, and exfiltration. [1] [2] [3]
S0357: Impacket
S0363: Empire
Empire is an open-source, cross-platform remote administration and post-exploitation framework that is publicly available on GitHub. While the tool itself is primarily written in Python, the post-exploitation agents are written in pure PowerShell for Windows and Python for Linux/macOS. Empire was one of five tools singled out by a joint report on public hacking tools being widely used by adversaries.[1][2][3]
S1063: Brute Ratel C4
Brute Ratel C4 is a commercial red-teaming and adversarial attack simulation tool that first appeared in December 2020. Brute Ratel C4 was specifically designed to avoid detection by endpoint detection and response (EDR) and antivirus (AV) capabilities, and deploys agents called badgers to enable arbitrary command execution for lateral movement, privilege escalation, and persistence. In September 2022, a cracked version of Brute Ratel C4 was leaked in the cybercriminal underground, leading to its use by threat actors.[1][2][3][4][5]
S1071: Rubeus
C0024: SolarWinds Compromise
The SolarWinds Compromise was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by APT29 that was discovered in mid-December 2020. APT29 used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply chain attacks to compromise user accounts and leverage their associated access. Victims of this campaign included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and other organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This activity has been labled the StellarParticle campaign in industry reporting.[1] Industry reporting also initially referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[2][3][4][5][1][6][7][8]
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[9][10][11] The US government assessed that of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds’ Orion product, a much smaller number were compromised by follow-on APT29 activity on their systems.[12]
C0014: Operation Wocao
Operation Wocao was a cyber espionage campaign that targeted organizations around the world, including in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The suspected China-based actors compromised government organizations and managed service providers, as well as aviation, construction, energy, finance, health care, insurance, offshore engineering, software development, and transportation companies.[1]
Security researchers assessed the Operation Wocao actors used similar TTPs and tools as APT20, suggesting a possible overlap. Operation Wocao was named after an observed command line entry by one of the threat actors, possibly out of frustration from losing webshell access.[1]
C0049: Leviathan Australian Intrusions
Leviathan Australian Intrusions consisted of at least two long-term intrusions against victims in Australia by Leviathan, relying on similar tradecraft such as external service exploitation followed by extensive credential capture and re-use to enable privilege escalation and lateral movement. Leviathan Australian Intrusions were focused on exfiltrating sensitive data including valid credentials for the victim organizations.[1]
All related ATT&CK context
Mitigation direction
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.3 | Current bundle | abb020124226… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.3 | Older bundle | abb020124226… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]Empire InvokeKerberoast Oct 2016
EmpireProject. (2016, October 31). Invoke-Kerberoast.ps1. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
Open source URL - [2]AdSecurity Cracking Kerberos Dec 2015
Metcalf, S. (2015, December 31). Cracking Kerberos TGS Tickets Using Kerberoast – Exploiting Kerberos to Compromise the Active Directory Domain. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
Open source URL - [3]Microsoft Detecting Kerberoasting Feb 2018
Bani, M. (2018, February 23). Detecting Kerberoasting activity using Azure Security Center. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
Open source URL - [4]Microsoft SPN
Microsoft. (n.d.). Service Principal Names. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
Open source URL - [5]Microsoft SetSPN
Microsoft. (2010, April 13). Service Principal Names (SPNs) SetSPN Syntax (Setspn.exe). Retrieved March 22, 2018.
Open source URL - [6]SANS Attacking Kerberos Nov 2014
Medin, T. (2014, November). Attacking Kerberos - Kicking the Guard Dog of Hades. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
Open source URL - [7]Harmj0y Kerberoast Nov 2016
Schroeder, W. (2016, November 1). Kerberoasting Without Mimikatz. Retrieved September 23, 2024.
Open source URL - [8]mitre-attackT1558.003Open source URL
Source: MITRE ATT&CK®. © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. Glexia is not affiliated with or endorsed by MITRE.