Directory Intelligence Services

Started working on a new product for BMA Data that easily allows you to import all your data from AD, Novell or other LDAP directory directly into mySQL or SQL 2005 / 2008 for offline heavy-duty data crunching. We’re going to call this Directory Intelligence Services and it should be available in some form within the next couple of months…. yes I know there are other products out there that do this (ILM / MIIS etc.) but these are all geared to Identity and Lifecycle Management and imho are a bit clunky and sometimes, ILM 2.0, require products you just don’t or may not have e.g. SQL 2005 / Exchange… plus there’s always room for competition… plus it’ll stop the brain from seizing… plus, well who cares it’s my life… so watch this space…

Create cached credentials without an interactive logon using runas or logonusera

Useful tidbit I used in a migration once upon a time…. you can create the cached credentials for a domain user by using runas.exe or coding with logonusera in some code then you’ll be able to logon interactively as that user from ctrl+alt+del without the domain being avaialble at logon. This works as long as the machine’s domain is not changed. Changing the domain can change the cert / hashing using to hash and store the credentials in the registry and also can force the OS to clear all cached credentials. I’ve found this useful when migrating users where the VPN solution is only available after logon and not at the logon screen. Obviously if you can see the domain at the logon screen then it doesn’t matter… also if you want to create an admin back door, for use when a user is roaming for remote debugging and support, using a domain account and not a local account you can send the code to create the cached credentials and not have to logon interactivel