DCSYNC ATTACK FROM AN ADVERSARY POINT OF VIEW

Abstract

This paper examines the DCSync attack from an adversarial perspective, analysing its operational logic, execution variants, and the detection surface each variant presents within monitored Active Directory environments. The study was conducted in a controlled laboratory environment comprising a Windows Server 2019 domain and a monitoring stack including Wireshark, Suricata, and Windows Event Log auditing, enabling systematic comparison of five distinct execution approaches ranging from PowerShell in-memory execution and Mimikatz invocation to Beacon Object File deployment and Impacket-based execution from Linux hosts. Experimental results demonstrate that DCSync's widely assumed low-noise characteristic is method-dependent rather than inherent. Network traffic analysis identifies non-domain-controller source IP addresses, TTL values indicative of Linux origin, and the absence of Kerberos authentication as reliable detection indicators, while Windows Event ID 4662 provides complementary log-based coverage across all tested variants. The findings confirm that combined network, log, and protocol-level monitoring provides effective detection across the full range of execution paths, and position DCSync as a technique whose stealth is contingent on tooling selection, authentication protocol, and operational timing rather than on any intrinsic property of the attack itself.