rubeus
2.0.0 open-sourceThe section your link pointed to isn't on rubeus's page any more, so we've brought you to the top.
Rubeus is a C# toolset for raw KerberosKerberosA network authentication protocol that uses tickets issued by a trusted service. Users and services can prove their identities without sending a password to each application. interaction and abuses, supporting ticket requests, forgery, extraction, roasting, and constrained delegation abuse.
rubeus asktgt /user:attacker /certificate:C:\cert.pfx /verifycerts Rubeus.exe kerberoast /outfile:hashes.txt /delay:500 rubeus.exe asktgs /rc4:HASH /service:cifs/SERVER /enctype:AES256 ./Rubeus.exe kerberoast /aes /user:target_user ./Rubeus.exe kerberoast /rc4opsec ./rubeus.exe kerberoast /outfile:hashes.txt /ticket:TGT_ticket.kirbi ./rubeus.exe kerberoast /usetgtdeleg /outfile:hashes.txt Rubeus.exe kerberoast /domain:target.local /dc:10.0.0.5 ./Rubeus.exe kerberoast /outfile:krb_hashes.txt ./Rubeus.exe asreproast /outfile:asrep_hashes.txt
Summary
Rubeus is an open-source command-line toolset, written in C# and licensed under BSD 3-Clause, for raw Kerberos interaction and abuse on Windows 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. networks. It runs as a standalone executable on a target host, handling ticket requests, forgery, harvesting, and renewal, along with attacks like KerberoastingKerberoastingAn attack that obtains Kerberos service tickets and tries to crack their encrypted contents offline. Recovering a weak service-account password can give the attacker that account's access. and delegation abuse. It is built for red teamers and penetration testers operating in post-exploitation stages of an Active Directory engagement, rather than for defenders. Its own documentation traces its lineage to Benjamin Delpy's Kekeo and Vincent LE TOUX's MakeMeEnterpriseAdmin, the projects it adapts and builds on for weaponizing Kerberos abuse. First committed in 2018 and grown to 47 contributors, it has seen only 4 commits in the past year, suggesting development has slowed considerably.
Rubeus is a C# toolset for raw Kerberos interaction and abuses, supporting ticket requests, forgery, extraction, roasting, and constrained delegation abuse.
How rubeus helps
Which accounts on this domain are Kerberoastable and worth cracking offline?
requests service tickets for accounts with a service principal name and outputs their encrypted blobs in a crackable hash format, without touching the account's actual credentials
Which accounts have pre-authentication disabled and can be roasted without a valid password at all?
scans the domain for accounts lacking Kerberos pre-authentication and returns their AS-REP hashes directly, no prior credentials needed
Can this compromised ticket still get me into other services now that credentials have changed?
renews a harvested ticket-granting ticket within its renewable lifetime and forges or requests new service tickets from it, showing whether the domain still honors it
Is this box holding tickets in memory that I can reuse elsewhere or move to another process?
dumps tickets currently cached in the session, and can inject a chosen ticket into a new process's logon session without needing elevated rights if a ticket is supplied
Can a delegation misconfiguration on this machine be turned into access as a higher-privileged user?
walks through the S4U2Self/S4U2Proxy exchange against a target with constrained or resource-based delegation rights and returns a service ticket impersonating the chosen user
Would forging a ticket for this domain actually be accepted, given the krbtgt or service key I have?
builds a golden or silver ticket from a supplied key and encodes the PAC by hand, so its validity depends entirely on whether the key and domain SID details it was given are correct
Languages
Command line
No command matches.
| option | found in | since | description |
|---|
Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
-
Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
-
Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
-
Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
-
Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
-
Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
-
Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
-
Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
-
Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
-
Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for rubeus, 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.
Score cards are part of every paid plan.
See plans → Already subscribed? Sign in →Trajectory
Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →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 rubeus 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.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
14 entries
No entries match these filters.
- August 20211
- March 20212
- December 20201
- November 20201
- January 20201
- February 20197
- October 20181
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in GhostPack/Rubeus, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 1 −4 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 0 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 0 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog 27 of 86 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 27
- Contributors / month 0
- Commits / month 0
- Stars 5,168
- other 100%
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
10 articles · updated Nov 4, 2026Where rubeus 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 Rubeus
Rubeus is a C# toolkit for Kerberos interaction and abuse .
2 more quotes
Therefore, Rubeus exploits these misconfigurations and performs functions like crafting keys and granting access using forged certificates.
This article explains how to use Rubeus in various scenarios.
-
PaperCut Attacker Uses Hundreds of AI Agents to Compromise 440+ Instances
…available offensive security tools (e.g., Mimikatz, SharpHound, Certipy, Rubeus, and Impacket) to compromise no less than 440 instances of PaperCut MF/NG hosted by 395 identified victim organizations in 48 countries.
-
AI-powered attack exploited PaperCut flaws to hack 395 organizations
The attacker’s toolkit includes Ligolo-ng, Mimikatz, Certipy, BloodHound, Rubeus, Impacket, NetExec, and custom Rust credential-collection utilities.
-
A Tale of Two SOCs: Insights From Two Red Team Assessments
To abuse Seamless SSO, the red team acquired encrypted credentials of a target user via DCSync and then used the Rubeus “asktgs” module to request service tickets used for SSO.
1 more quote
The red team used the Rubeus “asktgs” module to request service tickets used for SSO.
-
When Good Accounts Go Bad: Exploiting Delegated Managed Service Accounts in Active Directory
Domain Compromise After successfully executing the BadSuccessor technique, potential attackers can further exploit the domain using Rubeus, which supports dMSA authentication .
2 more quotes
Figure 10 illustrates some Rubeus commands using the attacker_dMSA object in our test environment to gain access to privileged services in the domain.
Example of commands to use Rubeus to further exploit the domain in our test environment.
-
Recutting the Kerberos Diamond Ticket
Much like an uncut diamond, the PoC in its current state demonstrated in Rubeus represents a minimal viable implementation with significant room for refinement.
2 more quotes
In this section, we’ll dissect the current PoC implementation found in Rubeus, breaking down its methodology step by step from the initial TGT request to its decryption, modification, and re-encryption process.
PAC Examination with a Loupe or with Rubeus’ “Describe” Function Like a jeweler with a loupe, sometimes you need to zoom in on a Kerberos ticket to see what it's really made of.
Add the badge to your README
Maintain this project? The badge links readers straight to this page, so they can follow every release here.
Choose a badge style and copy the code →