Windows Vista – A Geeks World

Computer account issues with vm snapshots

If you are often jumping back and forth between snapshots in your virtualized environment, you have probably had problems with computers that are unable to establish a secure connection with the domain. Basically, you have to rejoin the computer to the domain or reset password for the computer account, after restoring a snapshot. And you may question yourself, why this happens sometimes but not always?

You may see this in the eventlog

The session setup from the computer DomainMember failed to authenticate.
 The name of the account referenced in the security database is DomainMember$. 
 The following error occurred: Access is denied.

The session setup from the computer DomainMember failed to authenticate.

The name of the account referenced in the security database is DomainMember$.

The following error occurred: Access is denied.

The short explanation is, the password for the computers domain account does not match the one in AD, and have to be reset by either resetting the password or rejoining the domain.

The solution is to either create a script that resets the computer account, OR which is nicer but not always applicable in all environments, is to make sure the passwords always match!

There is a Local Security setting, which you can set on those computers that you need to restore (it’s a per computer setting so you don’t have to apply it to all of your computers). I usually do this in my Lab and Demo environments, so I can restore individual snapshots without worrying about this.

Just “Enable” the policy:

Domain member: Disable machine account password changes

Determines whether a domain member periodically changes its computer account password. If this setting is enabled, the domain member does not attempt to change its computer account password. If this setting is disabled, the domain member attempts to change its computer account password as specified by the setting for Domain Member: Maximum age for machine account password, which by default is every 30 days.

Default: Disabled.

Domain member: Disable machine account password changes

Determines whether a domain member periodically changes its computer account password. If this setting is enabled, the domain member does not attempt to change its computer account password. If this setting is disabled, the domain member attempts to change its computer account password as specified by the setting for Domain Member: Maximum age for machine account password, which by default is every 30 days.

Default: Disabled.

That will prevent those computers from changing their password in AD, so it will always match no matter which snapshot you jump back and forth to.
Though, the password changes for the computer account is a security precaution, disabling them could make it possible for a malicious user to get hold of the computer password and use it to Authenticate to the domain to read information.

The long(er) explanation:
A computer account is like a User Account, except for a few things. Like that a computer account password never expires, So even if you define that your users have to set a new password every 30 days, your computer accounts could use the same password for ever.

A Windows computer (client or server) will do a client side initiated password change according to the policy.

Domain member: Maximum machine account password age 
This security setting determines how often a domain member will attempt to change its computer account password. 
Default: 30 days.

Domain member: Maximum machine account password age

This security setting determines how often a domain member will attempt to change its computer account password.

Default: 30 days.

This means, that the client will by default initiate a password change every 30 day, when it has contact with the Domain. If the password change is successful, it will store the previous password as “OldVal” (Old Value) and the new Password as “CurrVal” (Current Value) in the registry at HKLM\SECURITY\Policy\Secrets\$machine.ACC.
If the client does not have contact with the Domain but the password is older than 30 days, it’s going to check (by default) every 15 minute if there is a Secure Channel to a DC and if it can initiate a password change.

When a client is booting, it will try to logon to the domain with the current password, if that fails, it will try with the previous password as a fail safe, in case the new password has not replicated to the other DC’s yet.

The reason a computer can join a domain with a pre-staged account where you as a user does not have the “Domain Join” permissions, is that the computer will simply logon with username: computername and password: computername$ (small letters with a $ at the end), and when the client has joined the domain, it will initiate a password reset and set a secure password.

And as stated above, the cool thing is that these policy settings are per computer. So you can use the 30 days default for all of your domain, except for a few computers that’s being used in testing or for application packaging where you regularly restore your snapshots.

The 30 day password change, is also the reason it’s so common to search the AD for inactive computer accounts by looking at the last password change. If the client has not changed password in the last ~90 days, it’s probably not in use anymore and the computer account can be deleted or inactivated.

There is a great article on this subject “Machine Account Password Process” written by the Microsoft “Directory Services Team” if you want even more in-depth information on Computer Account Passwords.

Can’t access a computer remotely without password?

I got a question the other day, “how can i access a computer remotely without a password?”

The reason that it’s by default is not possible to access a computer remotely with an account that does not have a password is because there is a new security policy/feature which states:

Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only

This security setting determines whether local accounts that are not password protected can be used to log on from locations other than the physical computer console. If enabled, local accounts that are not password protected will only be able to log on at the computer's keyboard.

Default: Enabled.

Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only

This security setting determines whether local accounts that are not password protected can be used to log on from locations other than the physical computer console. If enabled, local accounts that are not password protected will only be able to log on at the computer's keyboard.

Default: Enabled.

You can change that behavior by modifying the “Local Security Policy” here:

Just a thought. One could argue that it’s actually safer to have no password on the Local Admin account and leave this policy Enabled. Than have a weak password on the Admin account.

Because if there is no password, no malicious person or software could ever remotely access the computer as a local admin. While if you have a weak password, it would be possible for someone to brute force (try all possible combinations until you get in) the password.

Howto get NAP with Server and Domain Isolation to play together

If you are trying to get NAP (Network Access Protection) and SDI (Server & Domain Isolation) to play nice, you might not get the results you are expecting. I’m going to explain howto get NAP with Server and Domain Isolation to play together

There are plenty of Blogs and Guides out there, explaining how to get either NAP or Server and/or Domain Isolation to work. And that’s basically no problem so I won’t cover that here today.
But I’ve so far not found anyone who’s tried to combine both technologies.

Background

First of all, some background for my environment. I’m working on a project where we want to implement NAP to get the health check, but also Server and Domain Isolation to make sure that only trusted clients and users can talk to the systems they have access to. There was no doubt that we would use Certificates to validate the client health state.

Two Windows Server 2008 R2 Servers with HRA/NAP Roles and the Stand-Alone CA Role were installed for redundancy. Clients are getting the Health Certificates and all is good. The SA (Security Associations) policy on the servers and clients is configured to “Require Inbound and Request Outbound Authentication”, with a requirement for a Health Certificate from the organizations CA Servers. So far, so good.

The clients can now access the server when they have a valid health state, and are unable to access the server if they don’t. Yay! NAP works.

And the nice thing is that since the HRA only serves Domain Joined clients. As the servers won’t talk to any client without a Health Certificate, and only Domain Joined client can get one, we have also got “Domain Isolation”. Ok, two out of three check boxes done.

Now, try to use Server Isolation and configure a Firewall Rule to only allow ClientA to talk to connect to ServerX via RDP. That does not work. Well, it does work to create the rule, but it will never allow the traffic.
The reason is that when you use a NAP Certificate to authenticate the connection, there is no mapping to the computer account. Which makes it impossible to use a Computer Based rule.

Notice “No Authentication”.

Okay, so if you use the check box “Enable certificate to account mapping”?

Sorry, that doesn’t work either. When you use the Health Certificate feature, no certificate mapping is done in the Windows Firewall. This has been verified in the Windows source code.

This blog post does state that it should be possible to use that check box and then use a Policy “Access this computer from the network” where you can specify which computers are able to access the server over the network. But it’s still “All or nothing”. You can’t specify that ClientA should be able to access the SQL Server but nothing else.

Solution for NAP with Server and Domain Isolation

Luckily, there is a kind of workaround. To be honest, it’s not that common that you want to restrict so only ClientA, ClientB and ClientC can access the SQL Service on ServerX. I would dare to say its more common that you want to restrict which Users can access the service. Right?

I want to control so UserD, UserE and userF can access the RDP (Remote Desktop) Service, from any Health Domain Joined Client. It doesn’t really matter which client they connect from as long as it’s healthy and domain joined. Or I could control which clients they are able to logon to.

So by using a “Secondary Authentication” option, where we Authenticate the User, like this.
Still the same options for the Computer Authentication. Just add a Secondary Authentication on the SA for User (Kerberos v5). It’s then possible to restrict which users are able to connect to a specific service.

In your firewall RDP Rule, configure it to Require a secure connection, and specify which users should be able to access the service. Now try to connect with two different users via RDP. You should see how the rule is applied and works.

I decided to create a Firewall Rule for RDP that only allowed “TestUser” to connect to the service.
In the screenshot below, the upper RDP is started with the TestUser Account, while the bottom RDP Client is started with “Runas Domain\Administrator” which according to the rule, should not be allowed to connect. And as you see, it’s not able to connect, which is expected.

Summary

To get NAP to work with Server Isolation, you have to enable “Second Authentication” for the User with Kerberos Authentication, so there is Authentication done when the connection is established. Which in turn makes it possible to create Firewall Rules that can be applied to User Object, unfortunately not to computer objects.

How to launch programs from the Windows Logon screen

It does happen from time to time, that I want to start some troubleshooting tools before a user logs on to the system. For example Sysinternals Process Monitor or xperf / wpr etc.

There are several ways to do it, as with most things with IT. You can either logon with another user, start the tools and then use Fast User Switching.
Or enable Boot Logging to get the full boot sequence + logon for a user.
Or use Psexec from a remote system, etc etc
Another way to do it, is to execute any tool of your choice from the Windows logon (winlogon) screen. The nice side effect is that you will be executing the tool as System, with full permissions.

I recently had to troubleshoot a “Password Reset” solution, which launches a browser from the Logon screen and it were unable to connect to the web-service. If you ran it from within windows as a normal user account, or system account, it worked. So I had to troubleshoot the problem as it was happening.

Logon as a local administrator
Make a copy of %windir%\system32\utilman.exe
Take ownership of %windir%\system32\utilman.exe
Grant yourself full control permission on the file.
Replace utilman.exe with cmd.exe (or any other tool of your choise, though CMD is good as you can execute other tools from that one).
At the windows logon screen press the “Accessibility icon” in the bottom left corner.
Wahoo, you now have a command prompt with System Access

This works on Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

List computer certificates that will expire with Powershell

Just a small simple script that will list all Computer Cerificates that will expire in 90 days, to give you a heads up and time to renew them.

To list computer certificates that will expire in 90 days:

# Show computer certificates that will expire in 90 days 
get-childitem cert:LocalMachine\My -recurse | where-object {$_.NotAfter -gt (get-date)} | select Subject,FriendlyName,Thumbprint,@{Name="Expires in (Days)";Expression={($_.NotAfter).subtract([DateTime]::Now).days}} | where "Expires in (Days)" -lt 90 | Sort "Expires in (Days)"

# Show computer certificates that will expire in 90 days

get-childitem cert:LocalMachine\My -recurse | where-object {$_.NotAfter -gt (get-date)} | select Subject,FriendlyName,Thumbprint,@{Name="Expires in (Days)";Expression={($_.NotAfter).subtract([DateTime]::Now).days}} | where "Expires in (Days)" -lt 90 | Sort "Expires in (Days)"

Just change “-lt 90” to some other value to adjust the expiry period.