GhostHound

GhostHound is a BloodHound OpenGraph extension for Active Directory. SharpHound and every other AD collector skip CN=Deleted Objects: deleted objects (tombstones) are invisible to standard BloodHound attack-path analysis, even though the AD Recycle Bin and tombstone reanimation mechanisms can let a sufficiently-privileged principal restore one — and take over whatever identity it represents. GhostHound enumerates tombstones over LDAP with the SHOW_DELETED control, determines who can reanimate each one, and emits an OpenGraph JSON payload plus a model.json extension definition so BloodHound CE v8+ can render this as a first-class part of the graph.

Authorized use only. This is an offensive-security / red-team tool intended for authorized penetration tests and detection-lab research. Only run it against Active Directory environments you are explicitly authorized to test.

Prerequisites

• Administrators-equivalent rights (or an explicit delegation of read access to CN=Deleted Objects) on the target domain. Non-privileged accounts cannot see the container at all, regardless of which auth method is used — this is an AD-enforced restriction, not something GhostHound can work around.
• Network reachability to a Domain Controller on LDAP (389) or LDAPS (636).
• BloodHound CE v8+ if you want to import the resulting graph (collection and JSON output work standalone without it).

Usage

ghosthound -d ghost.local --dc-ip 10.0.0.10 -u alice -o tombstones.json

Password resolution order: --password (avoid — visible via ps//proc/<pid>/cmdline and shell history), then the LDAP_PASSWORD environment variable, then an interactive prompt if neither is set.

By default GhostHound connects over LDAPS (636) with certificate verification on. Two flags exist for environments where that doesn’t fit:

• --disable-ldaps — fall back to cleartext LDAP (389). The bind password is sent in plaintext; avoid this against anything but an isolated lab.
• --insecure-tls — keep LDAPS (encrypted transport) but skip certificate verification, for self-signed/lab certificates that aren’t in your trust store. Prefer this over --disable-ldaps whenever the DC’s cert is the only problem.

--timeout-secs (default 30) bounds both the initial connection and every subsequent LDAP operation, so an unreachable DC or a wrong --dc-ip fails within that window instead of hanging.

Run ghosthound --help for the full flag list.

Workspace Layout

GhostHound is built as a library-first workspace — see docs/adr/0001-language-rust-library-first.md for the rationale:

• bloodhound-opengraph: BloodHound OpenGraph JSON builder (the Rust counterpart to Python’s bhopengraph).
• ad-secdesc: permissively-licensed, from-scratch parser for ntSecurityDescriptor/DACL/ACEs (see docs/adr/0003-security-descriptor-parsing-strategy.md for why this isn’t a dependency on the only existing Rust equivalent, which is GPL-3.0).
• ad-secdesc-oracle: internal, unpublished differential test harness comparing ad-secdesc against that GPL-3.0 crate as a black-box oracle — quarantined out of the default build and every published crate’s dependency graph.
• ad-tombstone: LDAP SHOW_DELETED enumeration, AD Recycle Bin state modeling, and reanimation-rights analysis.
• ghosthound: the CLI orchestrating the above.

Importing into BloodHound

1. In BloodHound CE’s OpenGraph Management page, upload crates/ad-tombstone/model.json once to register the GhostHound_TombstoneUser/GhostHound_TombstoneComputer/GhostHound_TombstoneGroup node kinds and the GhostHound_CanReanimate/GhostHound_WasMemberOf/GhostHound_SameAs relationship kinds (all registered as traversable, so they participate in shortest-path queries).
2. Upload the JSON GhostHound produced (via the UI or the ingest API) as a normal OpenGraph data payload.
3. Run crates/ad-tombstone/bridge_shadow_nodes.cypher directly against Neo4j (BloodHound CE’s own Cypher search bar is read-only and will reject it):

   docker exec -i <graph-db-container> cypher-shell -u neo4j -p <password> < crates/ad-tombstone/bridge_shadow_nodes.cypher

   GhostHound’s edges to existing AD principals (Domain Admins, etc.) land on placeholder nodes rather than the real ones BloodHound already has — an OpenGraph ingest limitation, not a bug in this data; see docs/adr/0006-opengraph-cross-source-node-identity.md. This script bridges them so paths are actually traversable. Safe to re-run after every import.
4. Import the starter queries in crates/ad-tombstone/queries.json and, optionally, run crates/ad-tombstone/privilege_zones.cypher once to tag tombstones under Tier Zero OUs as high-value — this also needs cypher-shell rather than the search bar, for the same reason as step 3 (its SET is an updating clause too).

Once bridged, the reanimation path renders as a normal traversable path — a tombstone that was a Domain Admins member before deletion, reachable by every principal with the Reanimate-Tombstones right, bridged into the real Domain Admins node:

Supply-Chain Posture

This project prioritizes high-confidence security from day 1 (docs/adr/0005-supply-chain-openssf-posture.md):

• cargo deny for strict copyleft/GPL bans and vulnerability auditing.
• OpenSSF Scorecard workflows.
• cargo fuzz for panic safety in parsing raw binary descriptors.
• No unsafe in foundational libraries.

Design Rationale

The docs/adr/ directory records the decisions behind this design (language choice, auth scope, the ad-secdesc licensing constraint, the AD Recycle Bin data model, supply-chain posture), and docs/research/tombstone-viability-findings.md has the underlying research.