Published: 19 October 2020    Last Updated: 05 July 2023

If an Active Directory user has pre-authentication disabled, a vulnerability is exposed which can allow an attacker to perform an offline bruteforce attack against that user’s password.

This attack is commonly known as “AS-REP Roasting” in reference to Authentication Service Requests, a part of the process of authentication with Kerberos. An attacker who is able to find a user with pre-authentication disabled can request an AS-REP ticket for that user and this will contain data encrypted with the user’s password.