Active Directory Security Active Directory Enterprise Security, Methods to Secure Active Directory, Attack Methods Effective Defenses, Power. Shell, Tech Notes, Geek TriviaActive Directory has several levels of administration beyond the Domain Admins group. In a previous post, I explored Securing Domain Controllers to Improve Active Directory Security which explores ways to better secure Domain Controllers and by extension, Active Directory. For more information on Active Directory specific rights and permission review my post Scanning for Active Directory Privileges Privileged Accounts. This post provides information on how Active Directory is typically administered and the associated roles rights. Domain Admins is the AD group that most people think of when discussing Active Directory administration. This group has full admin rights by default on all domain joined servers and workstations, Domain Controllers, and Active Directory. It gains admin rights on domain joined computers since when these systems are joined to AD, the Domain Admins group is added to the computers Administrators group. Enterprise Admins is a group in the forest root domain that has full AD rights to every domain in the AD forest. It is granted this right through membership in the Administrators group in every domain in the forest. Administrators in the AD domain, is the group that has default admin rights to Active Directory and Domain Controllers and provides these rights to Domain Admins and Enterprise Admins, as well as any other members. Schema Admins is a group in the forest root domain that has the ability to modify the Active Directory forest schema. Since the Administrators group is the domain group that provides full rights to AD and Domain Controllers, its important to monitor this groups membership including all nested groups. The Active Directory Power. Shell cmdlet Get ADGroup. Member can provide group membership information. Default groups in Active Directory often have extensive rights many more than typically required. For this reason, we dont recommend using these groups for delegation. Where possible, perform custom delegation to ensure the principle of least privilege is followed. The following groups should have a DC prefix added to them since the scope applies to Domain Controllers by default. Furthermore, they have elevated rights on Domain Controllers and should be considered effectively Domain Controller admins. Backup Operators is granted the ability to logon to, shut down, and perform backuprestore operations on Domain Controllers assigned via the Default Domain Controllers Policy GPO. This group cannot directly modify AD admin groups, though associated privileges provides a path for escalation to AD admin. Photoshop Cs2 Image Ready Gif. Backup Operators have the ability to schedule tasks which may provide an escalation path. They also are able to clear the event logs on Domain Controllers. Print Operators is granted the ability to manage printers and loadunload device drivers on Domain Controllers as well as manage printer objects in Active Directory. By default, this group can logon to Domain Controllers and shut them down. This group cannot directly modify AD admin groups. Server Operators is granted the ability to logon to, shut down, and perform backuprestore operations on Domain Controllers assigned via the Default Domain Controllers Policy GPO. This group cannot directly modify AD admin groups, though associated privileges provides a path for escalation to AD admin. To a lesser extend, well group Remote Desktop Users into this category as well. Remote Desktop Users is a domain group designed to easily provide remote access to systems. In many AD domains, this group is added to the Allow log on through Terminal Services right in the Default Domain Controllers Policy GPO providing potential remote logon capability to DCs. We also see that many times the following is configured via GPO linked to the Domain Controllers OU Remote Desktop Users granted Allow log on through Terminal Services right via Group Policy linked to the Domain Controllers OU. Server Operators granted Allow log on through Terminal Services right via Group Policy linked to the Domain Controllers OU. Server Operators granted Log on as a batch job right via GPO providing the ability to schedule tasks. We work a step and a tradition each week. There is also open discussion on current events affecting a persons recovery. A fairly informal group of. Membershipbased service organization for young adults between the ages of 20 and 39. Provides young adults with an opportunity for personal growth, friendships, and. Active Directory AD is a structure used on computers and servers running the Microsoft Windows operating system OS. AD is used to store network, domain, and user. Review the GPOs linked to the Domain and the Domain Controllers OU and ensure the GPO settings are appropriate. We often find that a servers GPO is also linked to the Domain Controllers OU and it adds a Server Admins group to the local Administrators group. Since Domain Controllers dont have a local Administrators group, the DC updates the domain Administrators group by adding Server Admins. This scenario makes all members of Server Admins Active Directory admins. Any groupaccount granted logon locally rights to Domain Controllers should be scrutinized. Server Operators Backup Operators have elevated rights on Domain Controllers and should be monitored. The Active Directory Power. Shell cmdlet Get ADGroup. Member can provide group membership information. Other default groups with elevated rights Continue reading. Retrieving Information from Active Directory with Dsquery and Dsget Retrieving Information from Active Directory with Dsquery and Dsget. Dsquery and dsget are powerful commands you can use to retrieve information from Active Directory. This article first shows you how to build a distinguished name DN and then how to use the DN within these commands. This article shows you how you can use dsquery and dsget to retrieve lists of users, computers, groups, inactive accounts, disabled accounts, accounts with stale passwords, and group memberships. From the author of Dsquery and dsget are powerful commands you can use to retrieve information from Active Directory. For example, you can use them to retrieve a list of users, groups, inactive accounts, accounts with stale passwords, disabled accounts, group memberships, and more. Get Primary Group Active Directory Course' title='Get Primary Group Active Directory Course' />The basic syntax of dsquery and dsget is as follows dsquery object DN switch. DN switch. There are several different types of Active Directory objects you can query, but for this topic, Im limiting the discussion to users, computers, and groups. The distinguished name DN is a critical component of the command so its important to be able to build a DN for different objects. If you can build a DN, you can use this knowledge with several directory service DS commands including dsquery, dsget, dsmod, dsmove, and dsrm. Dsquery and dsget both supports many different switches and this article shows the usage for the inactive, disabled, stalepwd, members, and memberof switches. Building Distinguished Names. Every object within Active Directory Domain Services AD DS is uniquely identified with a DN. You can use the DN to identify the domain, an Organizational Unit OU within the domain, and any object within the domain. The three primary identifiers used in DNs with DS commands are. Offering listings of properties across the US and Canada. Includes online search for homes, apartments, builders, and agents. You can apply different filters and search terms to browse the Standards. Get Primary Group Active Directory Course' title='Get Primary Group Active Directory Course' />OUOrganizational Unit. CNCommon Name. CN can indicate an object such as a user, computer, or group. It can also identify non OU containers such as the Users and Computers containers. DCDomain Component Each part of the domain component is identified with separate DC identifiers. For example, a domain named pearson. These three domain components are separated like this in the DN DCpearson, DCitcertification, DCcom. However, if the DN is listed like this DCpearson. For example, Figure. Active Directory Users and Computers ADUC from a domain named pearson. A user from the North OU within the Sales OU is selected. Here are a few sample DNs for objects in the figure Domain DCpearson, DCitcertification, DCcomSales OU OUSales, DCpearson, DCitcertification, DCcom South OU OUSouth, OUSales, DCpearson, DCitcertification, DCcomGNorth. Sales. Admins group CNGNorth. Get Primary Group Active Directory Course' title='Get Primary Group Active Directory Course' />Sales. Admins, OUSouth, OUSales, DCpearson, DCitcertification, DCcomDarril. Gibson user account CNDarril. Gibson, OUSouth, OUSales, DCpearson, DCitcertification, DCcomThere are a couple of points worth emphasizing on the DNs. While Ive used camel casing capitalizing the first word for readability in some of these examples, the DNs are not case sensitive. You can enter them in any mixture of upper and lower case desired. Also, if there are any spaces within the DN, you must enclose the DN in quotes. I tend to use quotes all the time even the DN doesnt have a space to prevent accidental errors. Look at the South OU in the figure. Notice that the South OU is farther away from the pearson. Sales OU. It also farther away from the domain name in the DN. A common mistake is to create the DN this way OU Sales, OUSouth, DCpearson, DCitcertification, DCcom. However, the Sales OU is not within the South OU, so this will fail. The lowest level child OUs are listed first in the DN, followed by their parents. If you can build the DN, you can easily master any of the commands in this article by substituting the DN for your environment. Retrieve a List of Groups. The basic syntax to retrieve a list of groups is Dsquery group DNFor example, the following command retrieves a list of all groups in the Sales OU and any groups in child OUs C dsquery group ousales,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom. CNGSales,OUSales,DCpearson,DCitcertification,DCcom. CNGSales. Admins,OUSales,DCpearson,DCitcertification,DCcom. CNGNorth. Sales. Admins,OUSouth,OUSales,DCpearson,DCitcertification,DCcomNotice the output includes groups in the Sales OU and a group I the South OU a child of Sales. If you want to omit groups in the child OUs from the output, you can add the scope onelevel switch. This command retrieves a list of the groups in the Sales OU only. C dsquery group ousales,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom scope onelevel. CNGSales,OUSales,DCpearson,DCitcertification,DCcom. CNGSales. Admins,OUSales,DCpearson,DCitcertification,DCcomIf you want to capture the output of any of these commands in a text file, you can use the redirect symbol. For example, this command sends the output to a file named group. C dsquery group ousales,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom group. List Group Membership for Groups and Users. You can use dsget to retrieve a list of members for a group. The basic syntax is. Dsget group DN members. For example, this command retrieves a list of members for the Domain Admins group C dsget group cnDomain Admins,cnusers,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom members While the output of this command is valuable, you may want more. Many of the members listed will be groups, but the members of these groups arent included in the output. If you want to get a full listing of users and groups that are either direct or indirect members of the Domain Admins group, you can use the expand switch like this C dsget group cnDomain Admins,cnusers,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom members expand. You can also use the dsget command to identify group membership for a specific user using the memberof and expand switches. For example, this command shows the group membership for a user named Sally C dsget user cnSally,ousales,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom memberof. Figure. 2 shows the properties of Sallys user account with the Member Of tab selected. This is the same information youll see from the previous command. Figure 2 User group membership shown in ADUCHowever, you cant easily see the whole picture from ADUC. Is the GSales group in any other groups Is the GSales. Admins group in any other groups Sure, you could click through each of these groups to determine group membership. A simpler way is with the expand switch, like this C dsget user cnSally,ousales,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom memberof expand. Retrieve a List of Users. If you want to get a list of users, you can use the dsqueryuser command. The basic syntax is Dsquery user DN switch. For example, the following command retrieves a list of users in the domain, and redirects the output to a text file named users. C dsquery user dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom users. If you want to retrieve a list of users within a specific OU, you can use the scope switch to limit the output like this C dsquery user ousales,dcpearson,dcitcertification,dccom scope onelevel. Identify Inactive Accounts. The dsquery command includes an inactive switch you can use to identify inactive accounts, or accounts that havent been logged onto for a specific number of weeks.