We Keep Coding

Active Directory not working for offsite

Technology used: asp.net(C#), MVC, LINQ, Entity
I use the Active Directory for our company website. This system works for all of our employees on site and when we take our laptop offsite and use VPN.
However we recently hired some developers(offsite) who we have given VPN access to. But they are unable to run our code and I am unsure why. We have active directory users set up for them and they can connect to us through VPN.
They are running into two errors.
A username/password error.
The Server is not Operational error.
Does the VPN username/password have to match the active directory account?
If they log into their development machine does that username/password have to match the active directory account?
Is there some restriction on Active Directory and offsite I am unaware of as to why this would work for us but not our off site developers?
Below is the section of code that is giving the error: It errors on the line SearchResult rs = ds.FindOne();
public AD_CurrentUserProfile GetUserProfile(string userName)
{
using (DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://server.com"))
using (DirectorySearcher ds = new DirectorySearcher(de))
{
ds.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree;
ds.Filter = ("(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=User)(samaccountname=" + userName + "))");
ds.PropertiesToLoad.Add("distinguishedName");
ds.PropertiesToLoad.Add("manager");
ds.PropertiesToLoad.Add("directreports");
SearchResult rs = ds.FindOne();
AD_CurrentUserProfile userProfile = new AD_CurrentUserProfile();
userProfile.currentUser = GetProfileFromDN(rs.Properties["distinguishedName"][0].ToString());
userProfile.managerProfile = GetProfileFromDN(rs.Properties["manager"][0].ToString(), true);
int departmentID = db.IPACS_Department.First(v => (v.name == userProfile.currentUser.department)).departmentID;
userProfile.ipacs_department = db.IPACS_Department.Find(departmentID);
if (userProfile.currentUser.userName == userProfile.ipacs_department.owner)
{
userProfile.currentUser.isManager = true;
}
// Override for Provana and upper management
if (userProfile.currentUser.department == "Provana" || userProfile.currentUser.department == "JM")
{
userProfile.currentUser.isManager = true;
}
if (rs.Properties["DirectReports"].Count > 0)
{
if (!userProfile.currentUser.isManager)
{
userProfile.currentUser.isSupervisor = true;
}
userProfile.directReports = new HashSet<AD_User>();
foreach (string value in rs.Properties["DirectReports"])
{
userProfile.directReports.Add(GetProfileFromDN(value));
}
}
return userProfile;
}
}
I never pass 'password' anywhere in any of my code, so is this something Active Directory does by default?

A connection to AD will always require windows credentials. Your code, as posted, does not supply any credentials to AD. (You pass in a user name that you are looking up, but that is not the same as supplying credentials for the connection). This will work for users whose machines are attached to the domain...because your network credentials are passed in implicitly. For the external devs, when they VPN in, they supply credentials to the VPN protocol, which allows their machines to access your network, but that doesn't mean their machines are 'joined' to the domain...so AD will still require explicit credentials from them, including a personal password or a service account password that has permissions to access AD.
This line:
using (DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://server.com"))
essentially needs to allow a user name and password:
using (DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://server.com"), userName, pwd)
{
de.AuthenticationType = AuthenticationTypes.None | AuthenticationTypes.ReadonlyServer;
}
...you'll have to experiment with the AuthenticationTypes flags depending on how your network admins have it set up.

Check Password Reset on Active Directory Server

I need to reset windows password of any user through my .Net application. I am using the user's username to get its Directory Entry from AD server. I got these two different methods for changing password :
entry.Invoke("ChangePassword", oldPass, newPass);
&
entry.Invoke("SetPassword", "pass#123");
But I am getting the following error when am trying these methods on live AD server :
Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))
I have 2 AD servers. One of them is live and another is for testing purpose. I just want to check if my code is working or not. Since, access is denied on live server I can not change and check later my own password through code.
And if I am using the test AD server to change password, I don't know how to check whether the pasword is changed or not.
Kindly give any suggestions to check if my code is working properly or not.
Thanks in advance.

I think you're not getting a proper context setup before you call the invoke. Here's what I use for something similar. You'll need to set your own variables:
I'm using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement to get the functions.
//Domain related info
string _DCToUse = "myserver.domain.local";
string _ADConDomain = "DC=domain,DC=local";
string _AdDomain = "domain";
string _ADAdminUser = "administrator";
string _ADAdminPass = "password";
//User specific
string _UserName = "jsmith";
string _CurrentPass = "oldPass";
string _NewPass = "newPass";
PrincipalContext principalContext =
new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, _DCToUse,
_ADConDomain, _ADDomain+#"\"+_ADAdminUser, _ADAdminPass);
UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(principalContext, _UserName);
if (user == null)
{
string ADErrorMsg = "Couldn't find user, check your spelling.";
return Changed;
}
user.ChangePassword(oldPass, newPass);
user.Save();

System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryServicesCOMException (0x8007203B): A local error has occurred

When we try to search for a user in ActiveDirectory, we get that exception - 0x8007203B.
Basically we deployed a web service, which uses DirectoryEntry & DirectorySearcher class to find a user in AD, and sometimes this exception happens. But when we do IISReset, it again works fine.
Code is very simple like this:
DirectoryEntry domainUser = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://xxx.yyy/dc=xxx,dc=yyy", "domain\user", "pwd", AuthenticationTypes.Secure);
DirectoryEntry result = new DirectorySearcher(domainUser, filter);
Only some times this happens. I don't have much information to provide, any guess much appreciated
This is how my filter looks like
public static string BuildFilter(DirectoryEntry dirEntry, string userName, string userMail)
{
try
{
string filter = string.Empty;
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(userName) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(userMail))
filter = string.Format(#"(&(objectClass=user)(samaccounttype=805306368)(|(CN={0})(samaccountname={0})))", userName);
else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(userName) && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(userMail))
filter = string.Format(#"(&(objectClass=user)(samaccounttype=805306368)(mail={0}))", userMail);
else
filter = string.Format(#"(&(objectClass=user)(samaccounttype=805306368)(|(CN={0})(samaccountname={0})(mail={1})))", userName, userMail);
return filter;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
_logger.Error("BuildUserSearch - Failed to build LDAP search", ex);
}
return null;
}

You say that this it's just append after some time. As DirectoryEntry and DirectorySearcher are built on COM object into disposable class I would first just add some using sections to be sure that underlying objects are corectly freed.
using(DirectoryEntry root = new DirectoryEntry(ldapPath))
{
using(DirectorySearcher searcher=new DirectorySearcher(root))
{
...
}
...
}

Any guess are appreciated?
Then here's mine:
ASP.NET: DirectoryServicesCOMException [...];
Windows Error Codes: Repair 0x8007203B. How To Repair 0x8007203B.
What makes me confuse is that you say it works most of the time...
Did this help?
P.S. I'll update if I think of anything else.

Adding User to AD Security Group fails after user creation

I am using a WCF service to expose certain Active Directory management functions to our help desk staff without giving them the group membership required to manipulate AD directly. Adding users to and removing users from groups is working like a champ with existing users, but every time I create a new user it throws back this fun code:
The server is unwilling to process the request. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80072035)
The code I use to add the user to the group is
public bool AddGroupToUser(string userDn, string groupDn)
{
try
{
DirectoryEntry groupEntry = LdapTools.GetDirectoryEntry(groupDn);
groupEntry.Properties["member"].Add(userDn);
groupEntry.CommitChanges();
groupEntry.Close();
return true;
}
catch (DirectoryServicesCOMException)
{
return false;
}
}
Everything I've read on the subject is rather vague and I can't seem to find out WHY the exception is being triggered. Any ideas?
UPDATE
This is the code I use to create the user in AD:
try
{
DirectoryEntry container = GetDirectoryEntry(storageOu);
DirectoryEntry newUser = container.Children.Add("CN=" + employee.FullName, "user");
newUser.Properties["sAMAccountName"].Value = employee.Username;
newUser.Properties["displayName"].Value = employee.FullName;
newUser.Properties["givenName"].Value = employee.FirstName;
newUser.Properties["sn"].Value = employee.LastName;
newUser.Properties["department"].Value = departmentName;
newUser.Properties["userPrincipalName"].Value = employee.Username + "#APEX.Local";
newUser.CommitChanges();
newUser.Invoke("SetPassword", new object[] { employee.Password });
newUser.CommitChanges();
AdsUserFlags userSettings = AdsUserFlags.NormalAccount;
newUser.Properties["userAccountControl"].Value = userSettings;
newUser.CommitChanges();
ldapPath = newUser.Path;
newUser.Close();
container.Close();
}
catch (DirectoryServicesCOMException e)
{
// Something went wrong... what???
}
catch (Exception e)
{
// Something else went wrong
}
The new user can login, and can be manipulated using the standard MS tools.

Apparently, unless I'm missing an important step here, the issue is time. When forcing the system to sleep for 8 seconds before attempting to add groups to the new user the process works. If I do it any sooner than the 8 second mark it fails.
I'm marking this answer as correct unless anybody can provide me a better solution.

Try:
public bool AddUserToGroup(string userName, string groupName)
{
bool done = false;
GroupPrincipal group = GroupPrincipal.FindByIdentity(context, groupName);
if (group == null)
{
group = new GroupPrincipal(context, groupName);
}
UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(context, userName);
if (user != null & group != null)
{
group.Members.Add(user);
group.Save();
done = (user.IsMemberOf(group));
}
return done;
}
Reference:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/dhananjaycoder/activedirectoryoperations11132009113015AM/activedirectoryoperations.aspx

As it mentioned in here, can you tell us that you set the password of the newly created users? In the reference, it says that you should SetPassword of the user before doing anything with it.

Time issue could occur from a Active Directory replication issue.
Once, I gave a product to my customer which creates user over Active Directory, which has over 10.000 records in it, with the given informations on a SharePoint form and then program adds the user to a SharePoint group. The problem was, SharePoint throws an error about the newly created user, it says user does not exist in AD.
So, one of out system engineer told us about the replication opearation on the Active Directory that it could be the source of the problem and it was true.
For the solution, program tries to do the job for 10 times with 1 second sleeps. No problem occurred so far. So as a solution, I would suggest you to check out the AD for the existence of replication method.
P.S: When I asked questions to my customers system engineers about the replication operation, they all rejected the existence of AD replication operation and told me that the program has the problem. They believed me when we created a new user in AD from a computer, we couldn't see the user for 5 seconds on an another computer.

Active Directory Incorrect password attempts double counting

I am using the following C# code to connect to active directory and validate the login,
DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry();
string username = "myuser", path = "LDAP://addev2.dev.mycompany.com/CN=myuser,DC=dev,DC=mycompany,DC=com", password = "test";
for (int i = 0; i < 4;i++ )
{
try
{
de.AuthenticationType = AuthenticationTypes.Sealing | AuthenticationTypes.Secure | AuthenticationTypes.FastBind;
de.Username = username;
de.Password = password;
de.Path = path;
//de.RefreshCache();
Object obj = de.NativeObject;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
this works fine when the password is correct. However when the password is incorrect this shows as 2 invalid attempts in AD.
So what happens is when the AD admin allows 5 invalid attempts the user is locked out on the 3rd attempt.
when i look in the AD's event log 1 see 2 entries.
1)Pre-authentication failed:
2)Logon attempt by:
MICROSOFT_AUTHENTICATION_PACKAGE_V1_0
Logon account: m0707b#dev.mycompany.com
Source Workstation: WKSXXXX
Error Code: 0xC000006A
Stepping thro the code i see 2 event entries on the line
de.RefreshCache()
I tried using de.NativeObject to see if that would solve the problem. No Dice
Anyone have any pointers?

Finally found the answer to this perplexing issue when you use the format username#domain the IIS app uses 2 calls once using Kerebros and when that fails using NTLM causing a double count The fix is to use the following format for authentication domain\username and that fixed the issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/264678/EN-US/

You might check out the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement namespace. You can access an account and then cast one of the methods it has into a DirectoryEntry object. It might get around your double-authentication problem and it's easier to use.