ADCS - Certighost Ghost Machine Account Creation
Detects the creation of a machine account whose name starts with 'GHOST', which is the naming convention used by the CVE-2026-54121 (Certighost) exploit tooling. The public proof-of-concept for Certighost creates a temporary machine account with a name of the form GHOST<random>$ before enrolling for a DC certificate via the cdc chase path. The attacker-controlled machine account is used as the requester identity in the certificate request; the cdc attribute then redirects the CA to a rogue host that returns a forged Domain Controller identity. The resulting certificate carries the DC's SID and DNS name, enabling full PKINIT authentication as the targeted DC followed by DCSync. A machine account creation event (4741) where TargetUserName starts with 'GHOST' and ends with '$' is a high-fidelity indicator of this attack tool's execution. Legitimate environments very rarely provision machine accounts with this prefix.
Detection Logic
{
"selection": {
"EventID": 4741,
"TargetUserName
| startswith": "GHOST",
"TargetUserName
| endswith": "$"
},
"condition": "selection"
} False Positives
- ⚠ Unlikely
Field Validations
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