Diego, When a NT-class or any Win9X based machine is not officially part of a domain, they can still utilize the domain resources as long as there is a user account that has permission to utilize the domain. When not part of the domain, the client machine will treat the domain as a workgroup and EVERY client request will go through the validation process. When connected to the domain the valid user login is given a key that allows the client machine to "skip" the validation process for every share access as the key provides the authorization. You have found no bug. It is a standard piece of Windows Domain/Workgroup networking. It is actually a good thing that it works like that, as I would have had a serious problem when I partially brought up a domain at the office recently, after experiencing a serious issue with our old NT 4.0 PDC. If you want to make sure that a client machine will have NO Access to any domain resources when not part of the domain then the best way to do that is to either never create any user accounts on the local machine and generate a different password for the Administrator account then the one used on the domain. If you must have local user accounts, don't allow the user accounts to be able to change their passwords, or don't allow them to use the same names on their local machines as they do on the domain. Of course, when they attempt to connect to a resource, they would then be prompted with a user account and password box for validation. Isn't Microsoft Security grand? Regards, Robert Adkins II IT Manager/Buyer Impel Industries, Inc. Ph. 586-254-5800 Fx. 586-254-5804 -----Original Message----- From: Diego Rivera [mailto:lrivera@racsa.co.cr] Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 10:10 PM To: samba@lists.samba.org; Robert Adkins Subject: [Samba] Possible PDC security hole re/machine accounts Hey all! I was fiddling with some LDAP stuff for fun's sake, and I ran into this strange situation. The situation occurred with both my stock Samba and my modifications applied. I had a Win2000 Advanced Server machine already joined into the domain and working perfectly with PDC logons through the Samba server (v2.2.7, LDAP-SAM backend, OpenLDAP 2.0.25). While testing if the searches were being done as my new code specified, I explicitly removed the machine account for the W2K server expecting future logons to fail due to a missing/invalid machine account. I would then add the entry back to test if my code was finding stuff where it needed to be found. The strange thing is that even after the machine account was gone (and the samba processes had been restarted multiple times), I was still able to log in through the domain into that machine (W2K) - apparently through the PDC as I was able to access shares on other machines that should only be available to domain members. I rebooted the computer (W2K) just in case, and restarted samba in the process and I was still able to log in. Just in case, I changed back to "stock" LDAP Samba (in case it was a bug in my code), and the behavior was still the same. This seems to me like a HUGE PDC security hole, unless I'm misinterpreting the way PDC machine accounts are handled, and what's supposed to happen when a machine account is removed. It's my understanding that no NT-class machine (NT,2K,XP) can utilize resources within a PDC-protected domain if they haven't been joined into it and have a valid machine account in the PDC. If this is the case, then this is clearly a BIG hole that needs to be plugged ASAP. Anybody care to comment? Am I way out of whack here? Do I need to quit programming and try my luck as a janitor? ;) Best Diego PS/ The mods I was working on is adding "add machine script" and "ldap machine suffix" functionality to Samba, to allow for better handling of machine accounts from an admin level. -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba