Directory Insights in 10 Minutes – Episode 1
Welcome to the very first episode of Directory Insights in 10 Minutes, brought to you by Guardians of the Directory.
This series cuts through the noise — no fluff, no filler — just real-world, actionable insights for securing Active Directory and Entra ID.
In this kickoff episode, Craig Birch reveals the #1 most overlooked AD misconfiguration — one that ships insecure by default, is present in nearly every environment, and continues to provide attackers with a clear path to domain dominance.
🔍 What You’ll Learn:
• Why the built-in Administrator account (RID 500) is vulnerable out of the box
• How attackers abuse Kerberos delegation to impersonate high-privilege accounts
• Why Microsoft’s guidance is buried in 2,000+ pages of documentation
• The one checkbox that shuts down this attack path instantly
• Why putting accounts in the Protected Users group isn’t enough
🛠️ Quick Fix:1️⃣ Open the RID 500 account properties
2️⃣ Under the Account tab, check:
✅ “Account is sensitive and cannot be delegated”
3️⃣ Apply this setting to all privileged accounts
4️⃣ Include this check in your AD hardening baseline✅ Quick Takeaways:
The built-in Administrator account is a default privilege escalation path
Kerberos delegation + RID 500 = full impersonation
A single setting can eliminate this risk — but most admins miss it
Make this part of your secure provisioning process for every admin account
💬 Join the Conversation:
Have you seen this in your AD environment? Drop us a comment. Let’s talk about closing one of the oldest open doors in AD.
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