samba - Jan 2003 - secretly replacing a windows domain client with samba

Hello!

I have a problem: I work in a company which is strictly windows-only, and
I really need to replace a windows-xp machine - which is a member of the
company's domain - with a linux machine (using samba).

This new linux machine will have to upload backups of its data to a share
within the domain. Thus, it needs to be a member of the domain (correct?).

Obviously, I need to join the linux-box to the domain without the
domain-admins knowing, and thats where my problems start.

If I understood correctly, every machine in the domain has a machine trust
account (MTA) on the PDC. The MTA's username is the clients' NETBIOS
machine name with a "$" appended, and the password is set to a random
value by the client when first joining the domain.

That way, one cannot just replace a machine thats member of the domain
with another machine. The domain-admins would have to reset the MTA's
password, so that the new machine can join.

Since I cannot ask the domain-admins to do just that, I'm looking for a
way to extract this machine password - which, to my understanding, is
still stored on the old winxp-client - and use it in samba (samba stores
that in the secrets.tdb, right?).

Now my question: Have I understood the problem correctly? If yes, what can
I do, is there a way to extract the machine password? Has anyone ever done
this?

I *think* that the PDC is a windows NT 4 machine, but I'm not sure. I DO
have a valid user account for the domain, but it doesn't have any special
privileges (like being domain admin :)

Thanks a lot for your help!
	Ben Adler

P.S: Please CC to my address, too!

Benjamin Adler:
> Hello!
> I have a problem: I work in a company which is strictly windows-only, and
> I really need to replace a windows-xp machine - which is a member of the
> company's domain - with a linux machine (using samba).
> This new linux machine will have to upload backups of its data to a share
> within the domain. Thus, it needs to be a member of the domain (correct?).
> Obviously, I need to join the linux-box to the domain without the
> domain-admins knowing, and thats where my problems start.
> If I understood correctly, every machine in the domain has a machine trust
> account (MTA) on the PDC. The MTA's username is the clients'
NETBIOS
> machine name with a "$" appended, and the password is set to a
random
> value by the client when first joining the domain.
> That way, one cannot just replace a machine thats member of the domain
> with another machine. The domain-admins would have to reset the MTA's
> password, so that the new machine can join.
> Since I cannot ask the domain-admins to do just that, I'm looking for a
> way to extract this machine password - which, to my understanding, is
> still stored on the old winxp-client - and use it in samba (samba stores
> that in the secrets.tdb, right?).
> Now my question: Have I understood the problem correctly? If yes, what can
> I do, is there a way to extract the machine password? Has anyone ever done
> this?
> I *think* that the PDC is a windows NT 4 machine, but I'm not sure. I
DO
> have a valid user account for the domain, but it doesn't have any
special
> privileges (like being domain admin :)

[...]

You have it slightly backwards: Samba is an SMB/CIFS file *server*,
not a client, so all deliberations about secrets.tdb do not
apply. There is a Linux client filesystem implentation available
(smbfs) but that will not allow you to join a domain.

best regards,

-- 

Joerg Lenneis

email: lenneis@wu-wien.ac.at

On Sat, 2003-01-18 at 01:09, Benjamin Adler wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I have a problem: I work in a company which is strictly windows-only, and
> I really need to replace a windows-xp machine - which is a member of the
> company's domain - with a linux machine (using samba).
> 
> This new linux machine will have to upload backups of its data to a share
> within the domain. Thus, it needs to be a member of the domain (correct?).
wrong

to upload data, you only need a username and a password (normally)

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce - simo.sorce@xsec.it
Xsec s.r.l.
via Durando 10 Ed. G - 20158 - Milano
tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399
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