ADPATH-001: Escalation Paths to Tier-0
- Platform
- Active Directory
- Category
- Attack Paths
- Severity
- Critical
- Zero Trust pillar
- Identity (weight 3)
- Golden fixtures
- 3
- Branch coverage
- Observed: fixtures prove the verdicts they exercise
- Provenance
- baseline
What it checks
Models non-default control over Tier-0 objects (the domain root, AdminSDHolder, the Domain Controllers OU, and the GPO / Configuration / Schema containers) as privilege-escalation PATHS and reports the concrete takeover technique each one enables. Any non-default principal holding GenericAll / WriteDacl / WriteOwner / replication rights over one of these objects is a one-hop path to Domain Admin equivalence. It also flags non-default groups nested inside a Tier-0 group as escalation pivots — controlling such a group, or being added to it, confers the Tier-0 group's privileges. Full domain-wide transitive control-chain computation (low-priv user through a chain of GenericWrite/AddMember edges to Domain Admins) requires full-domain ACL collection, which is a separate roadmap item.
Recommended value
No non-default principals have control over Tier-0 objects.
Remediation
For each reported path, remove the attacker-controllable ACE from the target object's DACL (Active Directory Users and Computers > Advanced Security, or Set-Acl), or remove the principal from whatever group grants it. Only Tier-0 administrators should hold GenericAll/WriteDacl/WriteOwner or replication rights on the domain root, AdminSDHolder, the Domain Controllers OU, and the Policies/Configuration/Schema containers.
Fixture-proven verdicts
Every verdict below is proven by a golden fixture in the module's gating test suite. This table derives from the last green run; it cannot be edited by hand.
| Scenario | Expected verdict |
|---|---|
| clean | PASS |
| known-bad | FAIL |
| throttled | Not Assessed |
Framework mappings
- NIST SP 800-53
- AC-5, AC-6
- MITRE ATT&CK
- T1098, T1222.001, T1484.001