CheckSum Kerberos Constrained Delegation Privilege Escalation
CVE-2025-60704, referred to in the provided content as CheckSum, is a privilege-escalation vulnerability in Windows Kerberos affecting protocol transition and constrained delegation flows. The issue is described as a missing cryptographic step in Kerberos request processing: a vulnerable Key Distribution Center (KDC) accepts a malformed TGS-REQ containing an unkeyed checksum in the PA-S4U-X509-USER data due to a downgrade flaw. An attacker can craft a TGS-REQ targeting a service account configured for protocol transition with TrustedToAuthForDelegation enabled, populate the request with the identity of a privileged user such as a Domain Administrator, and have the KDC issue a service ticket asserting that forged identity. That forged service ticket can then be used as an evidence ticket in a subsequent S4U2proxy request to obtain a delegated service ticket to backend services such as CIFS or LDAP on behalf of the impersonated user.
Are you exposed to this one?
Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.
Impact, mitigation & remediation
What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.
Impact
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
Mitigation
If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.
Remediation
Patch, then assume compromise.
Exploits
No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.
Affected products & vendors
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
Recent activity
8 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A Kerberos delegation attack technique/vulnerability (named CheckSum) that can leave sensitive Active Directory computer accounts (Tier 0 / machine identities) delegable by default, creating a delegation hardening blind spot.
A vulnerability in the Kerberos constrained delegation mechanism, named CheckSum, allows attackers to hijack temporary delegations and gain domain admin rights. Patched as CVE-2025-60704.
A Kerberos KDC downgrade flaw affecting protocol transition and constrained delegation that allows an attacker to forge service tickets for a high-privileged user and obtain delegated access to backend services.
The version that knows your environment.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.