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Deploy a Complete Active Directory PenTest Lab in One Prompt with Cursor AI
Setting up an Active Directory lab should not feel like a weekend project you have to “babysit” for hours. GOAD-Mini gets you most of the way there — but if your goal is DFIR and detection engineering, “it boots and joins the domain” is not enough. You need a baseline you can trust, logging that is actually useful, and a repeatable workflow that lets you roll forward into scenarios and roll back instantly when you break something.
This guide is a manual, step-by-step deployment of a GOAD-Mini Active Directory environment on VirtualBox/Vagrant, built for two outcomes: (1) a stable, known-good (“golden”) snapshot you can always return to, and (2) consistent, high-signal telemetry for investigations — PowerShell operational events, process creation with command lines, authentication visibility, directory service activity, and the Windows event channels that matter when you want to…