Hi Ravi....How r u man....so u doing night shift nowadays...?Howz Avneet.... in helpdesk na...right?To avoid this type of probelm again in future...some guidelines are given below...may be helpful to you..Once the account lockout occurs, there are several tasks that should be completed to help identify the cause of the issue:
1. Obtain both the Security and System event logs from all of the computers that are locked out if those computers were logged on when the lockout occurred. Also, obtain these log files from the PDC emulator operations master and all domain controllers that may be involved in the account lockout.
2. Look for Event 675 (Preauthentication Failures) in the Security event log for the domain controllers for the locked-out user account. This event displays the IP address of the client computer from which the incorrect credentials were sent. When you view these events in the Security event log from the PDC, an IP address with Event 675 may be the IP address of another domain controller because of password chaining from other domain controllers. If this is true, obtain the Security event log from that domain controller to see the Event 675. The IP address that is listed in that Event 675 should be the IP address for the client computer that sent the invalid credential.
3. After you know which client computer is sending the invalid credentials, determine the services, programs, and mapped network drives on that computer. If this information does not reveal the source of the account lockout, perform network traces from that client computer to isolate the exact source of the lockout.
Protecting from External Account Lockout Denial of Service Attacks
· Protecting authentication and NetBIOS ports from Internet attack : On either the firewall or the router that connects your internal network to the Internet, block access to TCP and UDP ports 135 through 139 and port 445. If no edge filtering device is available, you can use IPSec filters to block these ports. To do this, use the configuration that is described in "How to Block Specific Network Protocols and Ports by Using IPSec" on the Microsoft Knowledge Base|http://support.microsoft.com/?id=813878.
Protect your environment with firewalls:- Prevent anonymous access : Set the RestrictAnonymous value to 2.
Some useful tools from Microsoft...Microsoft has added the following administrative enhancements to provide more account lockout information than the information that is available in the default configuration of the Windows Server 2003 family:
· AcctInfo.dll: The AcctInfo.dll file is a property page extension for user objects in the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC that provides detailed information about user password attributes. An administrator can use the AcctInfo.dll file to reset user account passwords on a domain controller that is in the user's Active Directory site.
· LockoutStatus.exe: The LockoutStatus.exe tool displays bad password count and time information from all of the domain controllers that are in a domain. You can run this tool as either a stand-alone tool or as an extension to the AcctInfo.dll file when you place it in the Systemroot\System32 folder on your computer.
EventCombMT.exe : to gather specific events from event logs from several different computers into one central location. You can configure EventCombMT.exe to search for events and computers. Some specific search categories are built into the tool, such as account lockouts. Note that the account lockouts category is preconfigured to include events 529, 644, 675, 676, and 681.
And also go for analyze Netlogon log files...
If you determine that the log files show that most or all of the user accounts are locked out in your domain, you must perform a trace to determine whether the source of the attack is internal or external to your network. In most account lockout situations, you must use Netlogon log files to determine which computers are sending bad credentials. When you analyze Netlogon log files, look for the 0xC000006A event code, because this event will help you determine where the bad password attempts began to occur. When you see the 0xC000006A event code and it is followed by a 0xC0000234 event code, the event codes that come after these event codes help you determine what caused the account lockout. If you see patterns in the log files, the patterns can help you determine if the event code was logged because of either a program attack or user error.
Check for Logon Events....
these things....would be helpful to u....
Bye,,,
Nitin
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Do analyze Netlogon log files...On 7/6/06, Leroy Clark < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:You might find this blog post useful
http://blogs.technet.com/guarddog/archive/2006/06/05/432761.aspx
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Regards,
Jaspreet Singh Jolly