Masquerading Certificate Services Outbound LDAP or SMB Connection via Certighost Coercion (via network_connection)

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1187Forced Authentication
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the Certificate Services process certsrv.exe initiating outbound connections to LDAP or SMB destination ports, the coerced-authentication behavior abused in the Certighost CVE-2026-54121 attack chain to force a Certificate Authority to authenticate against attacker-controlled infrastructure. Adversaries leverage this to relay CA credentials and impersonate Domain Controllers, making early detection critical for stopping certificate-based domain takeover.

Reporting behind it

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Windows DNS Query with Kerberos Coercion Signature via DNS Object SPN Spoofing

Windows Suspicious .library-ms File Creation by 7z.exe, winrar.exe, or explorer.exe

Masquerading Certificate Services Outbound LDAP or SMB Connection via Certighost Coercion (via network_connection)

Pivot detection · T1187 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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