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certipy-ad

5.1.0 open-source

Enumerates and exploits Active DirectoryActive DirectoryMicrosoft's directory service for Windows networks that centralises authentication and authorisation; cyber tools target or integrate with it because it controls identity and access across most enterprise environments. Certificate Services misconfigurations, supporting all ESC1-ESC17 attack pathsattack pathsA possible sequence of steps an attacker could take to reach a valuable target. It connects weaknesses, permissions and reachable systems rather than treating each finding separately..

Summary

certipy-ad is an open-source command-line toolkit for enumerating and abusing Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), free to use. It runs from the terminal and covers the full range of known ESC1-ESC17 attack paths, from discovering certificate authorities and templates to requesting or forging certificates, relaying NTLMNTLMA Windows authentication protocol that proves knowledge of a password through a challenge and response. Captured authentication exchanges can be abused in relay attacks when protections are absent. authentication to AD CS endpoints, and performing Shadow Credentials and Golden Certificate attacks. It is built for red teamers and penetration testers assessing AD CS misconfigurations, with defenders using it to understand the same paths. It can resolve SIDs through a BloodHound integration, tying its output into data those teams already work with, and sits in the post-exploitation category alongside other Active Directory attack tooling rather than any single named peer. First committed in 2021, it has 33 contributors and a release 59 days ago, suggesting active upkeep.

Enumerates and exploits Active Directory Certificate Services misconfigurations, supporting all ESC1-ESC17 attack paths.

How certipy-ad helps

Which certificate authorities and templates in this domain are vulnerable to abuse?

scans AD CS servers and enumerates templates, flagging those with misconfigured permissions or enrollment rights that map onto the known ESC1-ESC17 attack paths

Can a low-privileged account escalate to domain admin through a certificate template?

walks the enrollment rights and template settings for a given account and reports which escalation path, if any, applies and the steps needed to abuse it

Is an AD CS endpoint on this network relayable over NTLM?

attempts NTLM relay against the discovered HTTP(S) or RPC certificate enrollment endpoints and reports whether a certificate can be obtained this way

Can a stolen certificate or a machine's key material be turned into domain persistence?

forges or requests certificates and performs Golden Certificate and Shadow Credentials operations, then authenticates with the resulting certificate to confirm it works

Which compromised principals in a BloodHound dataset actually map to abusable AD CS rights?

resolves the SIDs it finds during enumeration through a BloodHound integration, so the same accounts and groups already mapped there line up with the certificate misconfigurations found here

Which of the accounts I already own could reach further through certificate templates?

takes the SIDs of accounts already known to be owned and checks them against template enrollment rights to show which additional access those accounts unlock

all 4 features, with the evidence for each →

Languages

Not documented

Features

4 capabilities · 2 backed by code, an API document or a real run

Built from certipy-ad's releases, docs, README and our own runs. “Seen” marks the month we first spotted a release the vendor didn't date. Group names and tags are our labels.

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What certipy-ad offers you

  • Command-line interface1
All capabilities 4 capabilities
AD CS attack path detection and exploitation shipped Detects and exploits Active Directory Certificate Services privilege escalation paths, including ESC4 and ESC17 techniques. 11 releases · 1 other source · first seen Feb 2022

Also counts toward: Command-line interface

release 11 total

  • Improves ESC4 exploitation with a more targeted default ESC1 template, reducing noise and collateral scope during abuse. 5.1.0 · Jun 2026 · source · release history
  • Adds ESC17 attack path detection to Certipy's AD CS enumeration. 5.1.0 · Jun 2026 · source · release history
  • Improves ESC4 exploitation with a more targeted default ESC1 template, replacing the previous generic one. 5.1.0 · Jun 2026 · source · release history
  • Adds ESC17 attack path: new AD CS privilege escalation technique detection and exploitation support. 5.1.0 · Jun 2026 · source · release history
  • Adds detection of the Remote Desktop Authentication OID. 5.0.2 · May 2025 · source · release history
  • ESC2 and ESC3 checks now include or n.Any Purpose = True condition for broader detection coverage 4.4.0 · Mar 2023 · source · release history

docs

  • Enumerates and exploits Active Directory Certificate Services misconfigurations, supporting all ESC1-ESC17 attack paths.
Neo4j database connectivity verified Connects to a Neo4j database instance using configurable host, port, username, and password credentials. 4 releases · 5 other sources · first seen Feb 2022

release

  • Adds configurable timeout for the LDAP shell session 4.5.0 · Jun 2023 · source · release history
  • Adds --allow-weak-tls flag to allow weak TLS ciphers in LDAP connections 4.2.0 · Dec 2022 · source · release history
  • Added MS-RRP (Remote Registry) support for retrieving CA configuration when MS-CSRA fails 2.0.5 · Feb 2022 · source · release history
  • Added timeout configuration for LDAP connections 2.0.5 · Feb 2022 · source · release history

command line

example

  • Connect to an AD server with legacy encryption settings for compatibility. certipy find -u user@domain.com -p password --allow-weak-tls 4.2.0 · Dec 2022 · source
Owned principal SID targeting verified Uses the SIDs of all owned principals as the user SIDs when performing operations. 4 releases · 1 other source · first seen Aug 2022

release

  • Allows resolving and obtaining SIDs using BloodHound integration. 5.0.4 · Nov 2025 · source · release history
  • Automatically includes domain computers group SIDs in user's SID list by default 4.5.0 · Jun 2023 · source · release history
  • certipy auth now outputs the LM hash alongside the NT hash. 4.1.0 · Dec 2022 · source · release history
  • Adds --auth-type sspi flag for integrated Windows authentication 4.0.0 · Aug 2022 · source · release history

command line

  • -use-owned-sids — Use the SIDs of all owned principals as the user SIDs 5.0.4 · Nov 2025 · command-line history
C2 registry operations integration shipped Supports retrieving registry query outputs from the Outflank C2 framework for use in cyber tooling workflows. 1 release · first seen Nov 2025

release

  • Supports Outflank C2 reg query command for registry operations within C2 workflows. 5.0.4 · Nov 2025 · source · release history

Lines in monospace are the tool's own words: help text parsed from its source, or an endpoint from its API document. Under release, a line is our summary of a dated release. Under docs, it is quoted from the tool's own documentation or website. Each links back to the source it came from.

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for certipy-ad, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

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Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail certipy-ad puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

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Releases

Show

10 entries

  1. June 20262
  2. November 20251
  3. May 20251
  4. June 20231
  5. March 20231
  6. December 20222
  7. August 20221
  8. February 20221
    Show

    10 entries

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in ly4k/Certipy, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 12 +1 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 2 +1 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close 52 days first maintainer reply 22 days
    6. Open backlog 14 of 223 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 14
    3. Contributors / month 0
    4. Commits / month 0
    5. Stars 3,670
    Issue themes, last 12 months
    • bugs 71%
    • features 17%
    • other 12%

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

    Articles

    8 articles · updated Nov 4, 2026

    Where certipy-ad turns up in what others publish: how-tos, attack reports that name it, and incident write-ups. A row says why it is here and quotes where the article names it; the link goes to the publisher.

    • A Detailed Guide on Certipy Hacking Articles
      In this Certipy Active Directory Exploitation guide, we explore how to use Certipy—an offensive and defensive toolkit designed for Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS)—to enumerate misconfigurations and abuse…
      2 more quotes
      Table of Content Overview of Certipy ADCS Key Concepts Prerequisites Finding Vulnerable Templates Examining Account Privileges Manipulating Accounts Requesting Certificates Authenticating via Certificate Managing Shadow…
      Attackers and red teamers can use Certipy to discover these misconfigurations, escalate privileges, impersonate users, and gain persistent domain access without ever needing a password.

    Libraries its release ships

    What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.

    None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.

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