Abusing Client-Side Extensions (CSE): A Backdoor Into Your Ad Environment
Tenable, Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025
Crucial for applying Active Directory Group Policy Objects, client-side extensions (CSEs) are powerful but also present a significant, often overlooked, attack vector for persistent backdoors.
Rather than cover well-documented common abuses of built-in CSEs, this article demonstrates how to create custom malicious ones. These are harder for defenders to identify than legitimate built-in CSEs used in malicious contexts, which have known globally unique identifiers.