RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core

[Laura A. Robinson]

Joe, isn't the below kind of like yelling, "OMG! Elvis!" in a McDonald's restaurant in Kalamazoo and following it up with, "nobody ask for his autograph"?   ;-) Laura From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of joe Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 3:13 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core Whoa... Nathan too. This list is hopping...   For those folks who don't know Nathan... Read his signature carefully and realize the level of people this list is seen by. And don't email him directly unless you found a world ending issue with Longhorn DCs, he is a busy guy about right now. :)  I could easily bother Nathan with about 40 emails a day but try to leave him completely alone.   All I say is if this stuff is implemented, please please please please have the details in the Platform SDK ASAP. Actualy flag values and meanings and caveates and everything else.     joe   -- O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm      From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nathan Muggli Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 12:18 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core We thought about using the confidential flag as the denotation for the RO-PAS, but that would break too many applications.   The RO-PAS would only be for applications that wanted to protect their secrets from replicating to a RODC. DIMS (aka cred roaming) is a prime example. Most likely if RO-PAS happens it will be a “negative” PAS in that the marking in the schema would mean that the attr is NOT replicated. That way new vanilla attributes are replicated to a RODC which would minimize app compat.   -Nathan Muggli RODC Program Manager   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Grillenmeier, Guido Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 1:35 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core   Not sure if it makes sense, but this could potentially be combined with the confidential flag – RODCs wouldn’t cache any confidential attributes, unless a “Confidential Data Caching Policy” would allow them to do so…    The confidential flag is already used by the Digital Identity Management Service (DIMS) for the Credential Roaming feature.  And instead of adding yet another flag to differentiate attributes which contain secrets or sensitive data, this may just be the right flag.   Granted, none of this will make life easier for app developers.   /Guido   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Puhl Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 10:05 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core   You’re right Joe – that the RODC PAS would complicate things for the developers.  The “easy” solution would be for developers to use the writeable flag when connecting to a DC, then they’d be guaranteed to not get an RODC…but even that isn’t a great solution, and if we get the RODC GC it only becomes more complex.   For general background though, the justification for the RODC PAS DCR is actually that there are numerous attributes which contain password hash, or password-like data.  Because these attributes aren’t part of the pre-defined list of “secrets”, they are replicated normally rather than “on-demand” via the PRP.  It wouldn’t do me much good to prevent replication of 5 password attributes, when a 6th one which also includes a hash gets pushed down through normal replication.  There needs to be a way for an administrator to define where these secrets live and protect them accordingly.    I’ve broached the topic of using this method to protect PII data a couple of times in relation to some RODC work we’re doing internally, and the response is always that it’s firmly in the realm of “unsupported” followed with a “that’d be a bad idea” and some serious head shaking – simply because of the way applications behave.   Brian   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of joe Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 5:08 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core   I am not sure if I understand where you are going but let me explain where I am coming from.   First, the passwords being there or not being there is not important for this talk, that is already built in and will be there, now the discussion is around everything versus an RODC PAS.   Everything is already there as well but is an important option because it will be the most used option. Actually I expect to see a ton of RODCs deployed that are configured as replicate everything including passwords so that people get the RO part of the benefit and they don't have to worry about replicating bad stuff back into the "real directory" and not have to worry about password caching management, if someone logs on somewhere, the password is cached there, bob's your uncle have a nice day.   So now we get down to replicating a portion of the normal attribute set. Why would you want to do this? Because you want to minimize the traffic to WAN sites and/or reduced info in some locations in case of compromise. For instance, if the email addresses of everyone in the company isn't on a DC in a WAN site and someone steals that DC hoping to get those email addresses, they are SOL; they missed. However, now think about this from a application developer standpoint and it is the same issue that exists with GCs only worse because it is DCs. If an app developer wants to find something, they need to understand what they can actually find in the GC in terms of what attributes are populated. Maybe they (a) put in a requirement and hope people follow it, maybe they (b) actually try to verify it, maybe they (c) say screw that and query a DC instead because they know all of the data is there for a full query. >From what I have seen the likely cases for an app that can handle any query is C, A, and in the absolute blue moon case B. Usually the app will just fail to find what it needs if you specify an attribute that isn't in the GC. How does Exchange do it??? So there are hybrids like where certain things that people KNOW will always be in GC PAS and they will set it up so that queries using those things will use a GC and everything else will go to a DC. We already know that the same override that exists for the GC PAS would have to exist for an RODC PAS so why not just make that the other option and be done with it? I don't really see the majority of developers doing this any better with RODCs than they do with GCs and so it seems like a lot of make work to allow for the flexible handling of that if you just say these are the options.   Again also the password thing isn't even worried about at the app level since apps can play with those anyway.     joe   -- O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm        From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Mulnick Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 6:57 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core Um, why? What value at this point?   Last I checked it supports limited applications that might want that information. And if you follow ~Eric's logic, they want to be secure out of the box.  That would indicate that they want it to be as minimal as possible until and unless told otherwise.   To put that information in there by default might be counter to that.   Now, if you had some templates or something so that we didn't have to work on the carpal tunnel, that would be something....:)   On 7/30/06, joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: RE: RODC PAS....   Oi, that will add some nice complexity to all of this...  :)   If I was looking to implement that I think I would look at doing it in four levels so people don't shoot themselves... Everything, everything but password info, core NOS info required for auth/authz with passwords, core NOS w/o passwords.   -- O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm        From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Dmitri Gavrilov Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 12:48 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core   The set of passwords that *can* be sent down to the RODC is controlled by password replication policy. The passwords are sent down by RODC's request, but the hub also checks whether the user (whose pwd is being requested) actually attempted to authenticate at RODC (the hub can induce this info from the traffic is sees). The pwd hash is sent down only if both are satisfied: pwd policy allows it and the user actually attempted to logon there.   Pwd policy is "empty" by default, i.e. nobody is in "allowed to reveal" list. It is admin's responsibility to populate this list. We might have some UI that helps with this process.   Once the hash is sent down, there's no way to remove it from RODC, basically because we do not trust that RODC will remove it, even if instructed to do so. Therefore, the only way to "expire" the hash is to change the password. We store the list of passwords that were sent down to RODC in an attribute on the RODC computer object (the hub DC updates the list when it sends a pwd). So, if the RODC is stolen, you can enumerate whose passwords were down there, and make these users reset their passwords. There's a constructed attribute that returns only the users whose * current* passwords appear to be on the RODC.   WRT what data is sent down – currently, we send everything, sans a handful of "secret" attributes, which are controlled by pwd replication policy. There's a DCR to be able to configure the list of attributes that can go down to RODC (aka RODC PAS), but it is not yet clear if we will get it done or not.  Note that the client data access story on RODC becomes quite convoluted because you don't know if you are seeing the whole object or only a subset of it. We do not normally issue referrals due to "partial reads".   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 8:22 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core   RODC stores password hashes only for a pre defined list of users and they are not stored on a permanent basis. [I'm unclear how the latter is achieved.]   The goal is such that if the RODC were removed from the office then no password secrets could be extracted from that machine.     neil   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Al Mulnick Sent: 28 July 2006 16:08 To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core The part that makes me wonder about the "story" is if it stores no secrets is the server doing anything for me? Is there a point to deploying the server in a remote office other than just being able to point to it in the closet and say, "see, I do to earn my paycheck!"     I'm sure there's more, but I don't yet know which parts are public information and which are NDA.   Can you tell I'm concerned about the story being created? I like stories; don't get me wrong.  But I'm concerned that the story being spun up might be missing the mark and lead a few people astray.   Safe to note that there are some features that differentiate the RODC from a NT4 BDC and that make it appealing in some cases. But if it actually does not store anything locally, ever, then I'm not sure it's worth the time to deploy one now is it?   Al     On 7/27/06, Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: FYI: http://blogs.msdn.com/jolson/archive/2006/07/27/679801.aspx          Read-Only Domain Controller and Server Core List info   : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ    : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.activedir.org/ml/threads.aspx   PLEASE READ: The information contained in this email is confidential and intended for the named recipient(s) only. 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