Suspicious Machine Account Replication - DcSync Indicator — Detection Rule
Detects suspicious Active Directory Replication Service (ADRS) requests originating from a machine account (SubjectUserName ending in '$') rather than a legitimate Domain Controller. Under normal operation, only Domain Controllers initiate replication requests carrying the DS-Replication-Get-Changes-All right. If a threat actor obtains valid machine account credentials — for example by abusing certificate-based authentication (PKINIT) to impersonate a DC after exploiting a CA vulnerability such as CVE-2026-54121 (Certighost), where a temporary machine account is created to request a DC certificate and then used to perform DCSync — they can dump all domain credential material including the krbtgt hash.