Shadow Credential Extraction

Shadow Credentials abuse Active Directory key trust by adding attacker-controlled public key material to a target account's msDS-KeyCredentialLink attribute, then using the corresponding private key to authenticate as that account through Kerberos PKINIT. The operator needs write access to the target attribute and a domain controller/environment that supports the required PKINIT flow. The directory attribute contains public key credential data; reading it does not recover the corresponding private key or a crackable password.