Resending as there was a "failure to act" on the prior post and the points are valid and important, IMO. :-)
Laura -----Original Message----- From: Laura A. Robinson [mailto:lrobin...@technologist.com] Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 10:04 PM To: 'Michael Sturtz'; 'Shang Tsung'; focus-ms@securityfocus.com Subject: RE: Administrator in Domain Admins group A couple of small corrections- 1. The built-in Administrator account cannot be deleted via normal mechanisms. Any mechanisms that might work to delete the account would be unsupported. 2. The Administrator account for the domain and the local Administrator account for a DC booted into DSRM are not actually the same account. Thanks, Laura -----Original Message----- From: listbou...@securityfocus.com [mailto:listbou...@securityfocus.com] On Behalf Of Michael Sturtz Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 1:16 PM To: Shang Tsung; focus-ms@securityfocus.com Subject: RE: Administrator in Domain Admins group The "Built in Administrator" account CAN be deleted however it is strongly cautioned against doing this. One of the reasons is it is the account that is used in safe mode should a disaster occur. If the built in Administrator account is locked out you can reboot the system in safe mode (by hitting the F8 key at startup) and still logon to the account and fix your system. If you delete or remove the built in administrator account you will be unable to logon to the system. I would recommend renaming the built in administrator account to a different name and then creating a new account named Administrator that is not a member of the Administrators or Domain Administrators group and is disabled. This account is a decoy to prevent nuisance attacks on your default administrator account. Michael Sturtz -----Original Message----- From: listbou...@securityfocus.com [mailto:listbou...@securityfocus.com] On Behalf Of Shang Tsung Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 7:58 AM To: focus-ms@securityfocus.com Subject: Administrator in Domain Admins group After an audit, I noticed that in the Domain Admins group of our domain, there is an account named Administrator. As my engineers told me, this account is created by default when you create a new domain and cannot be deleted or disabled. Is this true? I am not convinced yet. We do not like general purpose accounts like this because we lose accountability. I am pretty sure the password of that account is in the hands of people who are not supposed to have it. Each domain admin has his own account who is in the Domain Admins group, so there is no need for this Administrator account. Can we delete it? And if yes, what would be the consequences? Thanks, Shang Tsung
