AutoAttack and NodeZero on hardened GOAD

Assigned the goal of Domain Admin in every domain, AutoAttack's autonomous red team agent reached all three in ten runs on hardened GOAD, with a median of 0:51. Each run started after a clean VM rollback, with no credentials or prior environment knowledge. GOAD contains two forests, three domains and five Windows hosts.

We followed the hardening in Horizon3's August 2025 NodeZero benchmark. Its timeline records the last domain compromised at 13:45 and the final host at 14:25. Horizon3's result and our AutoAttack runs came from separate experiments.

Environment

Our GOAD deployment used cross-domain trusts and the following settings:

• Windows Server 2016/2019, patched through March 2026
• LLMNR disabled
• Windows Defender enabled on all hosts
• Provisioning accounts disabled

Each AutoAttack run had a three-minute execution window. The patch date and infrastructure differed from Horizon3's AWS deployment, whose hosts were patched at the time of its test.

The Attack Chain

Ten hardened GOAD runs: two forests, three domains, five Windows hosts. Fresh rollback and no starting credentials for each run. Domain-access times below are medians.

1. ~0:10 3 credentials in under 10 secondsAS-REP roast + LDAP description + SYSVOL script
2. ~0:30 LSA secrets via remote registrysql_svc password · castelblack
3. 0:41 Cross-domain pivot + DCSyncESSOS DA · meereen Domain Admin
4. 0:45 Golden Ticket + ExtraSIDSEVENKINGDOMS DA · kingslanding Domain Admin
5. 0:51 Parent-child DCSyncNORTH DA · winterfell Domain Admin

All ten runs followed the same route through Kerberos, LDAP, SMB, remote registry and directory replication. The agent used recovered credentials and domain trust material to continue toward the assigned goal. Domain timings below are medians.

Initial credentials. An account in NORTH, brandon.stark, had Kerberos pre-authentication disabled. AutoAttack obtained its AS-REP response and recovered the password offline. Authenticated directory queries found samwell.tarly's password in a description field. A SYSVOL script on winterfell exposed jeor.mormont's password. These three credentials were recovered in under ten seconds.

Access to castelblack. jeor.mormont had local administrator access. AutoAttack connected over SMB without a SQL Server pivot.

A reused service password. Reading LSA secrets on castelblack exposed the password for NORTH\sql_svc. It was also valid for ESSOS\sql_svc, which had Domain Admin privileges in ESSOS.

ESSOS, median 0:41. The service account authenticated to the meereen domain controller. Directory replication returned the krbtgt key and the trust key shared with SEVENKINGDOMS.

SEVENKINGDOMS, median 0:45. A forged Kerberos ticket carrying additional security identifiers enabled the trust-crossing step. Replication against kingslanding returned SEVENKINGDOMS\Administrator.

NORTH, median 0:51. The forest-root administrator access enabled replication of the child domain through winterfell.

Results

Ten AutoAttack runs on the hardened GOAD configuration above: two forests, three domains, five Windows hosts, no supplied credentials and a fresh VM rollback before each run.

ESSOS was reached first in every run, followed by SEVENKINGDOMS and then NORTH. The last domain was reached between 0:28 and 1:01. These are times to the access milestones, not whole-run durations.

What the comparison establishes

AutoAttack repeatedly gained control of every domain through exposed credentials and trusts. Horizon3's separate result also records NodeZero compromising the GOAD domains.

The experiments used different infrastructure, patch dates and software versions. Each publication records its own test conditions and access milestones.

For the comparison table and source links, see AutoAttack vs NodeZero. The benchmark keeps these hardened runs separate from our vanilla GOAD experiment with Nessus.