In an earlier post a script was published which automatically sends users a warning message/mail when their password is about to expire.
A more simple approach would be to scan the AD for disabled and locked accounts manually or at a set interval, say each morning.
Our Active directory is, like with many other, the source of user information. You should think of address information, function/department. Every now and then the account information is verified and when in doubt, discussed. Having the information in a human readable form, such as an Excel sheet, makes it so much easier. The script below will export all user info from the Active Directory to an Excel sheet. Just run from a computer connected to the your domain with a user that is allowed to query the AD and watch the magic (gives me a smile every time is see it run).
For all administrators that find themselves in the situation where local administrator accounts or passwords from local accounts on a WIndows system are ‘lost’, there is light at the end of the rainbow…
RainbowCrack is a general propose implementation of Philippe Oechslin‘s faster time-memory trade-off technique. In short, the RainbowCrack tool is a hash cracker that can be run from a CD. A traditional brute force cracker try all possible plaintexts one by one in cracking time. It is time consuming to break complex password in this way.
Why did we write this script? IBM allows us to get the warranty status of our IBM systems and how long the warranty lasts. It also enables us to check if the extended warranty was registered correctly.
Lookup for a single system
Lookup for multiple systems
The compilation of a list or input file that contains the required fields for a ‘multiple systems lookup’ wasn’t as easy to do as we had hoped.
Every two months user start calling or e-mailing the helpdesk to request a reset of their Active Directory account. Because a lot of users work at customer locations, they miss the warning about their expiring account. A former collegue brought the following script to my attention, which automaticly sends users a warning message when their password is about to expire. Allthough nearly perfect, some little adjustements have been made: