Group Policy Blog by Darren Mar-Elia (The “GPOGUY”)
Group Policy Security– Tinkering with External Paths
If you've been following this blog, you know that about 2 and half years ago, I started talking about Group Policy's precarious role in the typical enterprise's security posture. Many, if not most, AD shops use GP to perform security hardening on their Windows...
Speaking in Chicago Next Month!
Hey folks! Just a quick note that I'm giving a talk next month in Chicago. This is a follow-on to the Semperis Hybrid Identity Protection (HIP) Conference that I spoke at last November. This Chicago "Tech Day" event is a one-day event on March 13th in downtown...
Group Policy Storage Whitepaper Updated!
Hey Folks. It's been too long since I posted here, so I thought I'd break my fast by posting something a bit meaty. Many moons ago, I created a whitepaper, which is on the Gpoguy portion of this site, that described how and where the various areas in Group Policy...
Elevating AD Domain Access With Write Access on the Domain NC Head
With this post and my last post, I guess I'm on a path of finding interesting ways to "break" AD. The last post related to AD denial of service and this one relates to an interesting way to get to privileged access on AD by gaining what would seem to be completely...
Performing a Denial of Service on AD–How Hard Is it Really?
I was motivated to write this post based on a vendor blog that I read recently, that talked about ways to maliciously perform what amounted to a denial of service attack on AD. Ostensibly the post was designed to sell software, which I don't begrudge, but it got me...
Protecting Active Directory–Making AD and Group Policy Less “Visible” to Attackers
A couple of weeks ago, I gave a webinar for Semperis, on the topic of protecting AD from attackers. I presented 5 tips on the things you can do within your AD and Windows environments, to protect against "information exposure" that might allow an attacker to find...
How To Think About Windows Group Policy–An Infrastructure Architect’s Take
Long before I got into the software business, and even during that time, I was first and foremost, an IT guy. I have spent nearly 20 years of my 30+ years in technology in IT--mostly in large organizations. Much of that time, I worked as an infrastructure architect,...
Take the Group Policy Usage Survey!
All- Over the past few years, I've sent out a survey to the general population looking at trends in Group Policy usage. I've updated the survey for this year and it is now live and ready for your responses. It should take only about 5 minutes or less to complete, but...
New Version of the Group Policy GPMC PowerShell Module
One of the very first freeware projects I undertook when I started SDM Software, was to build a PowerShell snap-in (yes, they were called snap-ins back then) for Group Policy. That was back in 2007, long before Microsoft had their own Group Policy module...
“Hip” New Active Directory-Azure AD Conference Coming!
If you've been in the Microsoft infrastructure scene for a while, you probably remember the original NetPro Directory Experts Conference (DEC). DEC was THE conference to be at if you were an AD guy--or looking to improve your skills. Legends in the space like Joe...