VOOZH about

URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1550/003/

⇱ Use Alternate Authentication Material: Pass the Ticket, Sub-technique T1550.003 - Enterprise | MITRE ATT&CK®


ATT&CKcon 7.0 is coming October 27-28, 2026. Learn more about ATT&CKcon 7.0 and submit your proposal.
  1. Home
  2. Techniques
  3. Enterprise
  4. Use Alternate Authentication Material
  5. Pass the Ticket

Use Alternate Authentication Material: Pass the Ticket

Other sub-techniques of Use Alternate Authentication Material (4)

Adversaries may "pass the ticket" using stolen Kerberos tickets to move laterally within an environment, bypassing normal system access controls. Pass the ticket (PtT) is a method of authenticating to a system using Kerberos tickets without having access to an account's password. Kerberos authentication can be used as the first step to lateral movement to a remote system.

When preforming PtT, valid Kerberos tickets for Valid Accounts are captured by OS Credential Dumping. A user's service tickets or ticket granting ticket (TGT) may be obtained, depending on the level of access. A service ticket allows for access to a particular resource, whereas a TGT can be used to request service tickets from the Ticket Granting Service (TGS) to access any resource the user has privileges to access.[1][2]

A Silver Ticket can be obtained for services that use Kerberos as an authentication mechanism and are used to generate tickets to access that particular resource and the system that hosts the resource (e.g., SharePoint).[1]

A Golden Ticket can be obtained for the domain using the Key Distribution Service account KRBTGT account NTLM hash, which enables generation of TGTs for any account in Active Directory.[3]

Adversaries may also create a valid Kerberos ticket using other user information, such as stolen password hashes or AES keys. For example, "overpassing the hash" involves using a NTLM password hash to authenticate as a user (i.e. Pass the Hash) while also using the password hash to create a valid Kerberos ticket.[4]

ID: T1550.003
Sub-technique of:  T1550
Platforms: Windows
Contributors: Ryan Becwar; Vincent Le Toux
Version: 2.0
Created: 30 January 2020
Last Modified: 12 May 2026

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0016 APT29

APT29 used Kerberos ticket attacks for lateral movement.[5]

G0050 APT32

APT32 successfully gained remote access by using pass the ticket.[6]

G0060 BRONZE BUTLER

BRONZE BUTLER has created forged Kerberos Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT) and Ticket Granting Service (TGS) tickets to maintain administrative access.[7]

S0002 Mimikatz

Mimikatz’s LSADUMP::DCSync and KERBEROS::PTT modules implement the three steps required to extract the krbtgt account hash and create/use Kerberos tickets.[8][9][10][11]

S0192 Pupy

Pupy can also perform pass-the-ticket.[12]

S0053 SeaDuke

Some SeaDuke samples have a module to use pass the ticket with Kerberos for authentication.[13]

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1015 Active Directory Configuration

To contain the impact of a previously generated golden ticket, reset the built-in KRBTGT account password twice, which will invalidate any existing golden tickets that have been created with the KRBTGT hash and other Kerberos tickets derived from it.[14] For each domain, change the KRBTGT account password once, force replication, and then change the password a second time. Consider rotating the KRBTGT account password every 180 days.[15]

M1027 Password Policies

Ensure that local administrator accounts have complex, unique passwords.

M1026 Privileged Account Management

Limit domain admin account permissions to domain controllers and limited servers. Delegate other admin functions to separate accounts.[1]

M1018 User Account Management

Do not allow a user to be a local administrator for multiple systems.

Detection Strategy

ID Name Analytic ID Analytic Description
DET0352 Detection Strategy for T1550.003 - Pass the Ticket (Windows) AN1000

Detects unauthorized Kerberos ticket injection by correlating service ticket (TGS - 4769) requests with absent corresponding account logons (4624) and prior Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT - 4768) activity. Highlights anomalous service ticket generation chains involving unexpected users, hosts, or times, and suspicious injection of tickets via mimikatz-like tooling into LSASS memory. Behavior also includes network lateral movement using Kerberos authentication absent expected interactive logon patterns.

References

  1. Metcalf, S. (2015, August 7). Kerberos Golden Tickets are Now More Golden. Retrieved December 1, 2017.
  2. Schroeder, W. (2015, September 22). Mimikatz and DCSync and ExtraSids, Oh My. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
  3. The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), the New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NZ NCSC), CERT New Zealand, the UK National Cyber Security Centre (UK NCSC) and the US National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC). (2018, October 11). Joint report on publicly available hacking tools. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
  4. Nicolas Verdier. (n.d.). Retrieved January 29, 2018.
  5. Symantec Security Response. (2015, July 13). “Forkmeiamfamous”: Seaduke, latest weapon in the Duke armory. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
  6. Sean Metcalf. (2014, November 10). Kerberos & KRBTGT: Active Directory’s Domain Kerberos Service Account. Retrieved January 30, 2020.
  7. UCF. (n.d.). The password for the krbtgt account on a domain must be reset at least every 180 days. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
×