What is Active Directory? Core Components, concepts, AD in the cloud ..

 

What is Active Directory?

• AD is a hierarchical structure that manages users, computers, groups, and other objects within a network.
• It enables centralized administration and security policies across a domain.
• Users can log in once and access resources throughout the domain.

Core Components:

• Domain Controllers (DCs): Servers that host the AD database (NTDS.dit) and are responsible for authenticating users and enforcing policies. They are the heart of the AD environment.
• Domains: Security boundaries that group objects and define administrative policies.
• Forests: Collections of one or more domain trees, establishing trust relationships between them.
• Trees: Hierarchical groupings of domains that share a contiguous namespace.
• Organizational Units (OUs): Containers within a domain used to organize users, computers, and other objects for easier administration and application of Group Policies.
• Users: Individual accounts that allow people to access domain resources.
• Groups: Collections of user or computer accounts that simplify the assignment of permissions. Security groups are used to specify permissions.
• Trusts: Relationships between domains or forests that allow users in one domain to access resources in another.

Key Concepts:

• Domain Schema: The set of rules defining the objects and attributes that can exist in Active Directory.
• Group Policies: Sets of rules that control the operating environment for users and computers, applied at the domain or OU level.
• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS): The core service in Windows Server that implements Active Directory.
• Authentication: The process of verifying a user's identity (e.g., using Kerberos, a ticket-based authentication protocol).
• Authorization: The process of determining what resources a user is allowed to access after successful authentication.

Practical Aspects:

• The room likely involves basic enumeration of an AD environment and understanding the relationships between different components.
• It might touch upon default user accounts (Administrator, Guest) and groups (Domain Admins, Domain Users, Domain Computers).
• The importance of OUs for organizing and managing objects is highlighted.

AD in the Cloud (Brief Introduction):

• The room may briefly mention Azure AD as the cloud-based equivalent of on-premises Active Directory, noting some analogous concepts like Tenants (similar to Domains/Forests) and REST APIs (instead of LDAP).

In essence, the "Active Directory Basics" room on TryHackMe provides a foundational understanding of the terminology, components, and logical structure of Active Directory, which is crucial for anyone looking to understand Windows network administration and security.