MS13-032 Vulnerability in Active Directory Could Allow Remote Code Execution (Important)

It’s not often, that Active Directory Domain Controllers get security updates. The Active Directory Domain Services Server Role is one of the most robustly written code, as I pointed out in an earlier blogpost on Statistics on Active Directory-related Security Bulletins. Since 2001, Microsoft has issued 18 Security Bulletins with patches to address issues in … Continue reading "MS13-032 Vulnerability in Active Directory Could Allow Remote Code Execution (Important)"

Active Directory Time Sync (broken by default)

Active Directory relies on accurate time for a number of reasons. One of this reasons is Kerberos authentication, which by nature can only cope with a difference in time (time skew) of five minutes between the Kerberos server and client. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the time skew limitation and the overall Kerberos … Continue reading "Active Directory Time Sync (broken by default)"

CoreConfigurator brought back to life by Smart-X

I remember pretty well when Guy Teverovsky shared his CoreConfigurator tool, to help Server Core Systems Administrators perform everyday tasks through a Graphical User Interface (GUI). I still remember the buzz it generated throughout the blogosphere, I still remember the amount of kudos to Guy for building and sharing this tool, I still remember the … Continue reading "CoreConfigurator brought back to life by Smart-X"

Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 4

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter Edition offers the ability to make virtual machines highly available by leveraging failover clustering. This however is not a good idea in the case of Active Directory Domain Controllers. In this post I’ll explain why Hyper-V High Availability for Domain Controllers is not a good idea and … Continue reading "Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 4"

Remotely managing your Server Core using SSH

In the last few months I used my blog to post information on remotely managing your Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 with numerous tools, including the Computer Management MMC Snap-Ins (compmgmt.msc), the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT), Remote Desktop Connection (using RDP) and Windows Remote Shell. Now it's time to go a little … Continue reading "Remotely managing your Server Core using SSH"