Authenticating RPC Server with NTLM - c#

I am currently trying to improve an RPC Server I'm responsible for, both server and client run on the same machine locally, however I would like to restrict the server so that it only allows administrator (including built in /LocalSystem account) to connect to the rpc server through a named pipe.
First of all I am using the following library as a wrapper for the RPCserverApi/RPCClientApi:
https://github.com/csharptest/CSharpTest.Net.RpcLibrary
I create the Server like so:
server = new RpcServerApi(IId, MaxCalls, ushort.MaxValue, true);
server.AddProtocol(RpcProtseq.ncacn_np, Id, MaxCalls);
// Set authentication
server.AddAuthentication(RpcAuthentication.RPC_C_AUTHN_WINNT);
However when I check the named pipes security it still shows like it's not restricted at all, and my client can still connect even though I have yet to change that to specify authentication.
In addition I can check the access to that named pipe and I get:
\\.\pipe\myNamedPipe
RW Everyone
RW NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON
RW BUILTIN\Administrators

Okay, So for anyone else that ran into this problem There's a few things I needed to do which was not exposed in the library I was using. So instead I created my own wrapper.
When Registering the Rpc Interface with RpcServerRegisterIf2() I had to pass through the flag:
RPC_IF_ALLOW_SECURE_ONLY
Then In addition when setting up the protocols for the RpcServer: RpcServerUseProtseqEp() I also had to pass through an SDDL, to describe the restrictions on the end point. You can find a description of SDDL's here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secauthz/security-descriptor-definition-language
To do this I created an Ace String, then used ConvertStringSecurityDescriptorToSecurityDescriptor() to create the correct object. This then locked down the end point like:
\\.\pipe\myNamedPipe
RW BUILTIN\Administrators
But also it enforced on the server that only authenticated accounts could reach it
My issue originally reported was full of misunderstandings about RPC Servers and Named pipes, I thoroughly recommend reading and understanding the following articles, as they were very helpful to me.
https://csandker.io/2021/01/10/Offensive-Windows-IPC-1-NamedPipes.html
https://csandker.io/2021/02/21/Offensive-Windows-IPC-2-RPC.html

Related

get hostname of failover cluster role in .Net

I have a Windows service which is supposed to run in a (Windows Server 2012 R2) failover cluster as a generic service in a dedicated role, that is, there is a hostname and IP address configured for this service in the failover cluster manager. (I think 'role' used to be called 'group' in earlier Windows server releases).
One requirement is that the service has to know/provide the hostname of the role it is running in. System.Net.Dns.GetHostName() returns the name of the physical server on which the service is currently active, but what is needed is the configured hostname of the role.
I've searched both in the dns APi direction and the MS documentation for the System.ServiceProcesses namespace, but was not able to figure this out from these resources.
Is there a .Net API which is able to retrieve this, or is that the wrong approach altogether? (I.e. should this information be written into a configuration database during installation and retrieved from there).
There is a .NET API for Failover Clustering. Please refer to it here -
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372876(v=vs.85).aspx
As for your qeustion, I believe every Role has an OwnerNode property and this WMI Class should help you.
MSCluster_Node class
[Dynamic, Provider ("MS_CLUSTER_PROVIDER"), UUID ("{C306EBED-0654-4360-AA70-DE912C5FC364}")]class MSCluster_Node : CIM_UnitaryComputerSystem
{
string Roles[];
}
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa371446(v=vs.85).aspx
If you drill down to the methods there is also a -
ExecuteNodeControl method which even has a CLUSCTL_NODE_GET_ID
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc512216(v=vs.85).aspx
If the above doesn't help you, you can also try the reference below.
The MSCluster_ResourceToPossibleOwner class is a dynamic association WMI class that represents a list of the resources and their possible owner nodes.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa371478(v=vs.85).aspx
Hope this helps, I'm pretty new to doing stuff with Failover Clustering and C#. I hope I can learn from this post as well.

Access Remote MSMQ Count

My machine is in Domain D1 and there are public MSMQs in a remote server in domain D2. I am connected through vpn to D2, i.e I can RDP the machine in D2 and access the MSMQ.
What I want is to access (Know the message count) of the MSMQ without RDPing the system. So I build an application for this. I used Impersonation to impersonate the user of D2(i.e used credentials of D2)but the problem is I am not able to access the "Public" MSMQ ( used Messagequeue.GetPublicQueue() ) and exceptions are thrown with message "A workgroup installation computer does not support the operation." but when I used MessageQueue.GetPrivateQueue() it returned a collection of private queue.
I tried using MSMQManager for messageCount
Path = #"Direct:OS:machine\publicqueue";
FormatName=null;
new MSMQManager.inIt(machineName, path , FormatName);
This also throws an exception either the queue is not present or not open. but I can check that queue is working fine.
Are you comfortable doing a tiny bit of programming? If not, are you comfortable using PowerShell?
Either way - I would check out this post as it seems to contain the answers you are looking for.
Good luck, hope this helps
Your problem might be that you are working remotely.
The method GetPublicQueuesByMachine() is indeed not available over remote access.
You can see this in a feature matrix in the MSDN documentation: MessageQueue.GetPublicQueuesByMachine:
The following table shows whether this method is available in various Workgroup modes.
Workgroup mode Available
-------------- ---------
Local computer No
Local computer and direct format name No
Remote computer No
Remote computer and direct format name No
Also check the access privileges of your queues.
If I am wrong in the previous suggestion, it might be as simple as experimenting with the access rights for specific users in the network.
MSDN article Public and private queues states:
Default security access for public queues gives everyone permission to
send messages to a public queue. Specific permissions must be
granted for read access.
As for the actual message counting, John Opincar wrote a nice article about counting messages here: Counting Messages in an MSMQ MessageQueue from C#

.Net's Directory Services throws a strange exception

I have a small C# solution used to check users credentials. It works fine for two of my teammates, but on my PC I get an exception.
The relevant code:
PrincipalContext context = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);
if (context.ValidateCredentials(System.Environment.UserDomainName + "\\" + usr, pwd))
return true;
else
return false;
And the exception is:
DirectoryOperationException, "The server cannot handle directory requests.".
I tried creating context with the explicit server name and the 636 port number, but this didn't help as well.
Any ideas?
I had this problem too using IIS Express and VS 2010. What fixed it for me was a comment on another thread.
Validate a username and password against Active Directory?
but i'll save you the click and search... :) Just add ContextOpations.Negotiate to you Validate Credentials call like below.
bool valid = context.ValidateCredentials(user, pass, ***ContextOptions.Negotiate***);
I had this issue: things were working on my dev machine but didn't work on the server. Turned out that IIS on the server was set up to run as LocalMachine. I changed it to NetworkService (the default) and things started working.
So basically check the user of the app pool if this is running on IIS.
I had to just create a new app pool and assign it .NET 2.0, then assign the new app pool to our web app, and it started working. We had .NET 3.5 SP2, so the hotfix wasn't ideal for us. Since the WWW service is usually Local System, I questioned that too. But since it was .NET and security related, I gave a shot at the app pool first and it worked.
Perhaps you need the hotfix?
FIX: DirectoryOperationException exception
And you are an Admin or the id that your service is running under is an Admin on your PC right?
I take it you already looked into this:
System.DirectoryServices.Protocols
"You may receive a less than helpful DirectoryOperationException(“The server cannot handle directory requests.”) what isn’t quite so amusing about this is that it didn’t even try to communicate with the server. The solution was to add the port number to the server. So instead of passing “Server” to open the LdapConnection, I passed “server:636”. By the way, LDAPS is port 636 – rather than the 389 port used by LDAP."
Good point, I wouldn't expect that Win7/.NET 3.5 would need that patch. How about the info provided in this question:
Setting user's password via System.DirectoryServices.Protocols in AD 2008 R2

problem connecting to Active Directory server in C# .NET

I'm currently writing some software in C# which needs to connect to an AD server and get some user details. When I connect using the code below it works against most AD servers that I connect to but there are a couple where it fails with an error of "Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.". The server name / credentials I'm using are definately correct as I've tested them with an LDAP Browser and the AD server is using standard security (port 389 etc). Can anyone offer any advice?
Cheers
Tim
DirectoryEntry d = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" + domain, admin_username, admin_password);
try
{
object x = d.NativeObject;
}
catch
{
throw;
}
I've had similar issues programming .net / AD in the past. One thing I found useful is using an LDAP viewer to see if I can connect to certain servers, etc. In this way, I can at least determine if it is a .NET error (perhaps my code), a credential error, etc.
I use the free/lite version of Softerra's LDAP viewer (http://www.ldapbrowser.com/download.htm) although I'm sure there are many others to choose from out there. If you try the one listed here, make sure to download the 'LDAP browser' and not 'LDAP Administrator'. The browser is the free one.
Try connecting to the same LDAP path you're having trouble with in code, using a LDAP browser/viewer. This will at least as step one determine if it is a .NET/code issue or not. If you can't connect via the browser, it can be helpful to play around with the connection options, such as port, domain (FQDN), etc.
Hope this might help narrow things down.
Active Directory allows at least three different logon name styles:
LDAP - i.e. LDAP DN. For example: cn=JohnS, ou=Users, dc=example, dc=com
NTLM. For example: EXAMPLE\JohnS
Kerberos principal name: For example: johns#example.com
However, you cannot login with just JohnS like you do with Windows box. It's a very common mistake.

How should I validate a user's credentials against an ADAM instance over SSL?

Apologies in advance as I haven't had much experience with directories before.
I have an ASP.net application, and I have to validate its users against an Active Directory Application Mode instance running on Server 2k3. I was previously attempting a connection with DirectoryEntry and catching the COMException if the user's credentials (userPrincipalName & password) were wrong, but I had a number of problems when trying to bind as users who weren't a member of any ADAM groups (which is a requirement).
I recently found the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement library, which seems a lot more promising, but although it works on my local machine, I'm having some troubles when testing this in our testbed environment. Chances are I'm simply misunderstanding how to use these objects correctly, as I wasn't able to find any great documentation on the matter. Currently I am creating a PrincipalContext with a Windows username and password, then calling the AuthenticateCredentials with the user's userPrincipalName and password. Here's a very short exert of what I'm doing:
using (var serviceContext = new PrincipalContext(
ContextType.ApplicationDirectory,
serverAddress,
rootContainer,
ContextOptions.Negotiate | ContextOptions.SecureSocketLayer,
serviceAccountUsername,
serviceAccountPassword)) {
bool credentialsValid = serviceContext.ValidateCredentials(userID, password, ContextOptions.SecureSocketLayer | ContextOptions.SimpleBind)
}
If the user's credentials are valid, I then go on to perform other operations with that principal context. As I said, this works for both users with and without roles in my own environment, but not in our testbed environment. My old DirectoryEntry way of checking the user's credentials still works with the same configuration.
After a very long morning, I was able to figure out the problem!
The exception message I was receiving when calling ValidateCredentials was extremely vague. After installing Visual Studio 2008 in the test environment (which is on the other side of the country, mind you!), I was able to debug and retrieve the HRESULT of the error. After some very deep searching in to Google, I found some very vague comments about "SSL Warnings" being picked up as other exceptions, and that enabling "SCHANNEL logging" (which I'm very unfamiliar with!) might reveal some more insight. So, after switching that on in the registry and retrying the connection, I was presented with this:
The certificate received from the remote server does not contain the expected name. It is therefore not possible to determine whether we are connecting to the correct server. The server name we were expecting is ADAMServer. The SSL connection request has failed. The attached data contains the server certificate.
I found this rather strange, as the old method of connecting via SSL worked fine. In any case, my co-worker was able to spot the problem - the name on the SSL certificate that had been issued on the server was that of the DNS name ("adam2.net") and not the host name ("adamserver"). Although I'm told that's the norm, it just wasn't resolving the correct name when using PrincipalContext.
Long story short; re-issuing a certificate with the computer name and not the DNS name fixed the problem!

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