Kerberos Security Assessment

This guide treats Kerberos realms, KDCs, trusts, and service principals as a control boundary rather than a list of attack commands. First document who owns it, who should reach it, what identity context applies, and which data or downstream systems it can affect.

• Confirmed asset owner and in-scope address or application.
• Expected clients, identities, and network zones.
• Protocol versions, encryption expectations, and authentication mode.
• Sensitive data classes and downstream dependencies.
• Monitoring owner, escalation contact, and agreed stop threshold.

1. 01

   Map realms, KDCs, trusts, service principals, and administrative owners.

2. 02

   Record approved encryption types and ticket lifetimes.

3. 03

   Identify accounts permitted for delegation and sensitive identities protected from it.

4. 04

   Verify reliable time synchronization and domain-controller reachability.

A useful result demonstrates a broken security expectation with a reversible, low-impact test. Scanner labels and version matches are leads; validate the actual control and preserve the clean baseline beside the changed request.

1. 01

   Use designated accounts to confirm expected ticket issuance and service access.

2. 02

   Review duplicate or stale service-principal ownership administratively.

3. 03

   Validate delegation configuration without impersonating real users.

4. 04

   Confirm legacy encryption is absent or bounded by a documented exception.

ASSET / ENDPOINT:
SCOPE REFERENCE:
IDENTITY / NETWORK ZONE:
BASELINE:
CONTROL TESTED:
EXPECTED RESULT:
OBSERVED RESULT:
TIMESTAMP / REQUEST ID:
SANITIZED EVIDENCE:
STOP / CLEANUP STATUS:

• Monitor unusual ticket volume, encryption downgrade, delegation changes, and service-account changes.
• Correlate KDC events with endpoint and application logs.
• Alert on tickets for dormant services and anomalous privileged identities.

Keep raw data only when it is necessary to reproduce the finding. Redact credentials, session values, customer content, internal addresses, and personal data before evidence enters a ticket or report.

• Use modern encryption and managed service identities.
• Remove unconstrained or unnecessary delegation.
• Rotate exposed service credentials and review dependent services.
• Reduce ticket lifetime exceptions and monitor trust changes.