Mimikatz is a security research suite designed for auditing Windows authentication and managing system security configurations. It provides a comprehensive framework for extracting sensitive credentials, manipulating process privileges, and managing digital identity assets directly from system memory or offline memory dumps.
The project distinguishes itself through advanced system-level exploitation techniques, including runtime process injection, API hooking, and the ability to bypass cryptographic export restrictions. It features a specialized toolkit for Kerberos protocol operations, allowing for the inspection, forgery, and injection of authentication tickets to evaluate network identity security. Additionally, it supports the extraction of authentication secrets from the Local Security Authority and the local security account database.
Beyond its core auditing capabilities, the suite includes utilities for managing system services, digital certificates, and cryptographic providers. It offers functionality for privilege escalation, user session impersonation, and the synchronization of data from domain controllers. The tool also provides observability features such as session logging, output encoding, and network route monitoring to assist in the analysis of administrative and security-related actions.
