Applies to BloodHound Enterprise and CE SharpHound Community Edition has several optional flags that let you control scan scope, performance, output, and other behaviors.

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Enumeration Options

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CollectionMethods or ‘c’

This tells SharpHound what kind of data you want to collect. These are the most common options you’ll likely use:
  • Default: You can specify default collection, or don’t use the CollectionMethods option and this is what SharpHound will do. Default collection includes Active Directory security group membership, domain trusts, abusable permissions on AD objects (incl. ADCS objects), OU tree structure, Group Policy links, the most relevant AD object properties, local groups from domain-joined Windows systems, and user sessions.
  • All: Performs all collection methods.
  • DCOnly: Collects data ONLY from the domain controller, will not touch other domain-joined Windows systems. Collects AD security group memberships, domain trusts, abusable permissions on AD objects (incl. ADCS objects), OU tree structure, Group Policy links, the most relevant AD object properties, and will attempt to correlate Group Policy-enforced local groups to affected computers.
  • ComputerOnly: Collects user sessions (Session), local groups (LocalGroup), and User Rights Assignment (UserRights) from domain-joined Windows systems. Additionally, CA registry (CARegistry) data and DC registry (DCRegistry) data is collected. Will NOT collect the data collected with the DCOnly collection method.
  • Session: Just does user session collection. You will likely couple this with the --Loop option. See SharpHound examples below for more info on that.
  • LoggedOn: Does session collection using the privileged collection method. Use this if you are running as a user with local admin rights on lots of systems for the best user session data.
Here are the less common CollectionMethods and what they do:
  • Group: Just collect security group memberships from Active Directory
  • ACL: Just collect abusable permissions on objects in Active Directory
  • GPOLocalGroup: Just attempt GPO to computer correlation to determine members of the relevant local groups on each computer in the domain. Doesn’t actually touch domain-joined systems, just gets info from domain controllers
  • Trusts: Just collect domain trusts
  • Container: Just collect the OU tree structure and Group Policy links
  • LocalGroup: Just collect the members of all interesting local groups on each domain-joined computer. Equivalent for LocalAdmin + RDP + DCOM + PSRemote
  • LocalAdmin: Just collect the members of the local Administrators group on each domain-joined computer
  • RDP: Just collect the members of the Remote Desktop Users group on each domain-joined computer
  • DCOM: Just collect the members of the Distributed COM Users group on each domain-joined computer
  • PSRemote: Just collect the members of the Remote Management group on each domain-joined computer
  • ObjectProps - Performs Object Properties collection for properties such as LastLogon or PwdLastSet
  • UserRights - Just collect User Rights Assignment from domain computers (needs admin)
  • CARegistry - Just collect ADCS properties from registry of Certificate Authority servers
  • DCRegistry - Just collect properties from registry of Domain Controller servers
  • CertServices - Just collect ADCS objects from Certificate Services
For example, to collect sessions: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --CollectionMethods session
Collection methods visualization:
Image credit: https://twitter.com/SadProcessor

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Domain or ‘d’

Tell SharpHound which Active Directory domain you want to gather information from. Importantly, you must be able to resolve DNS in that domain for SharpHound to work correctly. For example, to collect data from the `contoso.local` domain: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --Domain contoso.local

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SearchForest or ‘s’

This flag would instruct SharpHound to automatically collect data from all domains in your current forest.

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Stealth

Perform “stealth” data collection. This switch modifies your data collection method. For example, if you want to perform user session collection, but only touch systems that are the most likely to have user session data: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --CollectionMethods Session --Stealth

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ComputerFile

Load a list of computer names or IP addresses for SharpHound to collect information from. The file should be line-separated.

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DistinguishedName

Base DistinguishedName to start search at. Use this to limit your search. Equivalent to the old --OU and ‘—SearchBase’ option. 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --DistinguishedName "OU=New York,DC=Contoso,DC=Local"

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LDAPFilter or ‘f’

Instruct SharpHound to only collect information from principals that match a given LDAP filter. For example, to only gather abusable ACEs on a user with a certain display name, run this: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --LDAPFilter "(displayName=John Smith)"

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ExcludeDCs

Instruct SharpHound to not touch domain controllers. By not touching domain controllers, you will not be able to collect anything specified in the DCOnly__ collection method, but you will also likely avoid detection by e.g., Microsoft ATA/ATP. 
C:\> SharpHound.exe -d contoso.local --ExcludeDCs

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RealDNSName

In some networks, DNS is not controlled by Active Directory, or is otherwise not synchronized to Active Directory. This causes issues when a computer joined to AD has an AD FQDN of COMPUTER.CONTOSO.LOCAL, but also has a DNS FQDN of, for example, COMPUTER.COMPANY.COM. You can help SharpHound find systems in DNS by providing the latter DNS suffix, like this: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --RealDNSName COMPANY.COM

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OverrideUserName

When running SharpHound from a `runas /netonly`-spawned command shell, you may need to let SharpHound know what username you are authenticating to other systems as.

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CollectAllProperties

Collect every LDAP property where the value is a string from each enumerated Active Directory object.

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Output Options

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OutputDirectory

By default, SharpHound will output zipped JSON files to the directory SharpHound was launched from. You can specify a different folder for SharpHound to write files to. For example, to instruct SharpHound to write output to C:temp: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --OutputDirectory C:\temp\

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OutputPrefix

Add a prefix to your JSON and ZIP files. For example, to have the JSON and ZIP file names start with “Financial Audit”: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --OutputPrefix "Financial Audit"

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NoZip

Instruct SharpHound to not zip the JSON files when collection finishes

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ZipPassword

Specify the password to be used for encrypting zip file, by default the zip file is not encrypted

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ZipFileName

Specify the name of the zip file

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RandomFileNames

Randomize output file names

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PrettyPrint

Outputs JSON with indentation on multiple lines to improve readability. Tradeoff is increased file size.

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TrackComputerCalls

Adds a CSV tracking requests to computers by dumping error codes from attempted connections to computers

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Loop Options

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Loop or ‘l’

Instruct SharpHound to loop computer-based collection methods. For example, attempt to collect local group memberships across all systems in a loop: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --CollectionMethods LocalGroup --Loop

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LoopDuration

By default, SharpHound will loop for 2 hours. You can specify whatever duration you like using the HH:MM:SS format. For example, to loop session collection for 12 hours, 30 minutes and 12 seconds: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --CollectionMethods Session --Loop --LoopDuration 12:30:12

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LoopInterval

How long to pause for between loops, also given in HH:MM:SS format. For example, to loop session collection for 12 hours, 30 minutes and 12 seconds, with a 15 minute interval between loops: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --CollectionMethods Session --Loop --Loopduration 12:30:12 --LoopInterval 00:15:00

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Connection Options

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DomainController

Target a specific domain controller by its IP address or name for LDAP collection

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LdapPort

Specify an alternate port for LDAP if necessary

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SecureLdap

Connect to the domain controller using LDAPS (secure LDAP) vs plain text LDAP. This will use port 636 instead of 389. Recommended.

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LdapUsername

Use with the LdapPassword parameter to provide alternate credentials to the domain controller when performing LDAP collection.

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LdapPassword

Use with the LdapUsername parameter to provide alternate credentials to the domain controller when performing LDAP collection.

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DisableSigning

Disables Kerberos Signing/Sealing. Not recommended.

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DisableCertVerification

Disables certificate verification when using LDAPS. Not recommended.

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OverrideUserName

Override the username to filter for NetSessionEnum.

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DoLocalAdminSessionEnum

Do the session enumeration with local admin credentials instead of domain credentials.

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LocalAdminUsername

Username for local Administrator to be used if DoLocalAdminSessionEnum is set.

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LocalAdminPassword

Password for local Administrator to be used if DoLocalAdminSessionEnum is set.

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Performance Options

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PortCheckTimeout

When SharpHound is scanning a remote system to collect user sessions and local group memberships, it first checks to see if port 445 is open on that system. This helps speed up SharpHound collection by not attempting unnecessary function calls when systems aren’t even online. By default, SharpHound will wait 2000 milliseconds (2 seconds) to get a response when scanning 445 on the remote system. You can decrease this if you’re on a fast LAN, or increase it if you need to. For example, to tell SharpHound to wait just 1000 milliseconds (1 second) before skipping to the next host: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --PortScanTimeout 1000

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SkipPortCheck

Instruct SharpHound to not perform the port 445 check before attempting to enumerate information from a remote host. This can result in significantly slower collection periods.

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SkipPasswordCheck

Skip check for PwdLastSet when enumerating computers.

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SkipRegistryLoggedOn

Skip registry session enumeration

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Throttle

Adds a delay after each request to a computer. Value is in milliseconds (Default: 0)

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Jitter

Adds a percentage jitter to throttle. (Default: 0)

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Threads

Number of threads to run enumeration with

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Cache Options

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CacheName

SharpHound will create a local cache file to dramatically speed up data collection. It does this primarily by storing a map of principal names to SIDs and IPs to computer names. By default, SharpHound will auto-generate a name for the file, but you can use this flag to control what that name will be. For example, to name the cache file `Accounting.bin`: 
C:\> SharpHound.exe --CacheName Accounting.bin

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MemCache

This will instruct SharpHound to NOT create the local cache file. Future enumeration will be slower than they would be with a cache file, but this will prevent SharpHound from putting the cache file on disk, which can help with AV and EDR evasion.

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RebuildCache

Invalidate the cache file and build a new cache

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Miscellaneous

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StatusInterval

Interval in which to display status in milliseconds

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Verbosity or ‘v’

Enable verbose output