Multi-Agent Based Automation of Credential Theft and Replay Prevention

Manual investigation of credential dumping (Mimikatz, LSASS) and pass-the-hash activity can take days, allowing attackers to move laterally and establish persistence. This workflow uses specialized agents to correlate weak signals from Windows Event Logs (ID 4688, 4624) and EDR telemetry, triggering automated containment actions like session revocation or host isolation within minutes of detection. This reduces potential breach impact and financial exposure by orders of magnitude.

Tier 1 analysts spend significant time sifting through authentication anomalies and EDR alerts for signs of credential compromise. This workflow automates the initial triage, enrichment, and correlation of these signals. By deploying a 'virtual analyst' agent that handles repetitive investigation tasks, your existing team can focus on complex threat hunting and strategic response, effectively multiplying analyst leverage and reducing burnout and operational costs.

Credential theft is the critical enabler for ransomware deployment and mass data theft. By automating the detection and disruption of this kill chain step, you directly lower the probability of a catastrophic encryption or exfiltration event. The workflow integrates with Active Directory and PAM tools to automatically revoke compromised privileged accounts, blocking the attacker's path to crown jewel systems and data stores before they can be leveraged.

Manual incident response is prone to human error and inconsistency. This workflow codifies your best-practice playbooks for credential attack response into a deterministic, agentic system. Every containment action is logged with a rationale, creating a defensible audit trail for compliance (e.g., SOX, HIPAA, PCI-DSS) and post-incident reviews. Approval gates ensure high-risk actions (like domain admin revocation) require human oversight, balancing speed with control.

The operational upside translates directly to cost savings: reduced dwell time lowers potential breach costs (remediation, fines, brand damage), while automated triage and containment reduce the labor cost per incident. Furthermore, by preventing lateral movement, you avoid the massive clean-up costs associated with enterprise-wide ransomware or compromise. The ROI is measured in avoided incidents and reclaimed analyst time.

The business impact is only realized if the workflow integrates seamlessly into your production environment. The architecture is designed to plug into your existing EDR (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft Defender), SIEM (Splunk, Sentinel), IAM (Okta, Azure AD), and Active Directory via APIs. This avoids costly rip-and-replace projects and leverages your current security investments, accelerating time-to-value and simplifying ongoing maintenance.

Credential-based lateral movement is the primary mechanism for ransomware deployment and data exfiltration. Automating detection and containment of Mimikatz, LSASS dumping, and Kerberos ticket attacks reduces attacker dwell time from days to minutes. This directly lowers the probability of a full-scale breach, minimizing potential ransomware payouts, data loss fines, and recovery costs that can reach millions.

Specialized agents are deployed to ingest and analyze Windows Security Event Logs (IDs 4688, 4624, 4672) from endpoints and Domain Controllers. Using behavioral models, they flag sequences indicative of credential access: unusual process creation targeting LSASS, use of credential dumping tools (even renamed binaries), and anomalous Kerberos ticket requests (e.g., ticket-granting-ticket requests without pre-authentication). Integration with EDR APIs (CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender) provides deep process tree visibility.

A central orchestration agent (built with LangGraph or similar) receives signals from detection agents. It correlates weak signals across systems—e.g., a suspicious process on an endpoint followed by a successful logon from that endpoint to a domain controller using the same account. It enriches events with threat intelligence (e.g., known attack tool hashes) and asset criticality from the CMDB. This agent assigns a confidence score and, if a threshold is met, triggers the containment workflow.

Upon high-confidence validation, this agent executes sequenced containment actions via integrated APIs. Standard playbooks include: 1. Identity Access Revocation: Disabling the compromised account via Active Directory or IAM (Okta, Azure AD) APIs. 2. Session Termination: Killing active sessions on endpoints and servers. 3. Host Isolation: Quarantining the suspected source endpoint via EDR or NAC (Cisco ISE) commands. All actions are logged with rationale for the audit trail and can be configured with pre-approval gates for critical assets.

The workflow's efficacy depends on deep, API-level integration with the enterprise security stack. This includes:

• EDR Platforms: For endpoint telemetry and host isolation commands.
• SIEM/SOAR (Splunk, Sentinel): As the event bus and for case management.
• Active Directory & IAM: For real-time user object modification and session control.
• Network Access Control (NAC): For network-level quarantine.
• Ticketing (ServiceNow): For automated incident creation and stakeholder notification. The architecture uses a message queue (e.g., RabbitMQ) to decouple agents and ensure action durability.

Deployment is phased, starting with detection-only mode in a pilot environment (e.g., non-production domain). Critical governance controls include:

• Approval Gates: Manual approval required before any containment action on Tier-0 assets (Domain Controllers, SQL Servers).
• Rollback Scripts: Pre-defined scripts to instantly reverse any automated action (e.g., re-enable account, remove host from quarantine).
• Observability Dashboard: Real-time view of agent confidence scores, actions taken, and system state.
• Weekly Tuning Cycles: Analysts review automated decisions to refine detection logic and thresholds, creating a continuous feedback loop.