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+<chapter id="securitylevels">
+<chapterinfo>
+ &author.tridge;
+ &author.jelmer;
+</chapterinfo>
+<title>Samba as Stand-Alone Server</title>
+
+<para>
+In this section the function and purpose of Samba's <emphasis>security</emphasis>
+modes are described.
+</para>
+
+<sect1>
+<title>User and Share security level</title>
+
+<para>
+A SMB server tells the client at startup what "security level" it is
+running. There are two options "share level" and "user level". Which
+of these two the client receives affects the way the client then tries
+to authenticate itself. It does not directly affect (to any great
+extent) the way the Samba server does security. I know this is
+strange, but it fits in with the client/server approach of SMB. In SMB
+everything is initiated and controlled by the client, and the server
+can only tell the client what is available and whether an action is
+allowed.
+</para>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>User Level Security</title>
+
+<para>
+I'll describe user level security first, as its simpler. In user level
+security the client will send a "session setup" command directly after
+the protocol negotiation. This contains a username and password. The
+server can either accept or reject that username/password
+combination. Note that at this stage the server has no idea what
+share the client will eventually try to connect to, so it can't base
+the "accept/reject" on anything other than:
+</para>
+
+<orderedlist>
+<listitem><para>the username/password</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>the machine that the client is coming from</para></listitem>
+</orderedlist>
+
+<para>
+If the server accepts the username/password then the client expects to
+be able to mount any share (using a "tree connection") without
+specifying a password. It expects that all access rights will be as
+the username/password specified in the "session setup".
+</para>
+
+<para>
+It is also possible for a client to send multiple "session setup"
+requests. When the server responds it gives the client a "uid" to use
+as an authentication tag for that username/password. The client can
+maintain multiple authentication contexts in this way (WinDD is an
+example of an application that does this)
+</para>
+
+</sect2>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>Share Level Security</title>
+
+<para>
+Ok, now for share level security. In share level security the client
+authenticates itself separately for each share. It will send a
+password along with each "tree connection" (share mount). It does not
+explicitly send a username with this operation. The client is
+expecting a password to be associated with each share, independent of
+the user. This means that samba has to work out what username the
+client probably wants to use. It is never explicitly sent the
+username. Some commercial SMB servers such as NT actually associate
+passwords directly with shares in share level security, but samba
+always uses the unix authentication scheme where it is a
+username/password that is authenticated, not a "share/password".
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Many clients send a "session setup" even if the server is in share
+level security. They normally send a valid username but no
+password. Samba records this username in a list of "possible
+usernames". When the client then does a "tree connection" it also adds
+to this list the name of the share they try to connect to (useful for
+home directories) and any users listed in the <command>user =</command> &smb.conf;
+line. The password is then checked in turn against these "possible
+usernames". If a match is found then the client is authenticated as
+that user.
+</para>
+
+</sect2>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>Server Level Security</title>
+
+<para>
+Finally "server level" security. In server level security the samba
+server reports to the client that it is in user level security. The
+client then does a "session setup" as described earlier. The samba
+server takes the username/password that the client sends and attempts
+to login to the "password server" by sending exactly the same
+username/password that it got from the client. If that server is in
+user level security and accepts the password then samba accepts the
+clients connection. This allows the samba server to use another SMB
+server as the "password server".
+</para>
+
+<para>
+You should also note that at the very start of all this, where the
+server tells the client what security level it is in, it also tells
+the client if it supports encryption. If it does then it supplies the
+client with a random "cryptkey". The client will then send all
+passwords in encrypted form. You have to compile samba with encryption
+enabled to support this feature, and you have to maintain a separate
+smbpasswd file with SMB style encrypted passwords. It is
+cryptographically impossible to translate from unix style encryption
+to SMB style encryption, although there are some fairly simple management
+schemes by which the two could be kept in sync.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+"security = server" means that Samba reports to clients that
+it is running in "user mode" but actually passes off all authentication
+requests to another "user mode" server. This requires an additional
+parameter "password server =" that points to the real authentication server.
+That real authentication server can be another Samba server or can be a
+Windows NT server, the later natively capable of encrypted password support.
+</para>
+
+<note><para>
+<emphasis>Server</emphasis> level security is incompatible with what is known
+as <emphasis>schannel</emphasis> or "sign and seal" protocols. This means that
+if you want to use <emphasis>server</emphasis> level security you must disable
+the use of "sign and seal" on all machines on your network.
+</para></note>
+
+<sect3>
+<title>Configuring Samba for Seemless Windows Network Integration</title>
+
+<para>
+MS Windows clients may use encrypted passwords as part of a challenege/response
+authentication model (a.k.a. NTLMv1) or alone, or clear text strings for simple
+password based authentication. It should be realized that with the SMB protocol
+the password is passed over the network either in plain text or encrypted, but
+not both in the same authentication request.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+When encrypted passwords are used a password that has been entered by the user
+is encrypted in two ways:
+</para>
+
+<itemizedlist>
+ <listitem><para>An MD4 hash of the UNICODE of the password
+ string. This is known as the NT hash.
+ </para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>The password is converted to upper case,
+ and then padded or trucated to 14 bytes. This string is
+ then appended with 5 bytes of NULL characters and split to
+ form two 56 bit DES keys to encrypt a "magic" 8 byte value.
+ The resulting 16 bytes for the LanMan hash.
+ </para></listitem>
+</itemizedlist>
+
+<para>
+MS Windows 95 pre-service pack 1, MS Windows NT versions 3.x and version 4.0
+pre-service pack 3 will use either mode of password authentication. All
+versions of MS Windows that follow these versions no longer support plain
+text passwords by default.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+MS Windows clients have a habit of dropping network mappings that have been idle
+for 10 minutes or longer. When the user attempts to use the mapped drive
+connection that has been dropped, the client re-establishes the connection using
+a cached copy of the password.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+When Microsoft changed the default password mode, support was dropped for caching
+of the plain text password. This means that when the registry parameter is changed
+to re-enable use of plain text passwords it appears to work, but when a dropped
+service connection mapping attempts to revalidate it will fail if the remote
+authentication server does not support encrypted passwords. This means that it
+is definitely not a good idea to re-enable plain text password support in such clients.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The following parameters can be used to work around the issue of Windows 9x client
+upper casing usernames and password before transmitting them to the SMB server
+when using clear text authentication.
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ <ulink url="smb.conf.5.html#PASSWORDLEVEL">passsword level</ulink> = <replaceable>integer</replaceable>
+ <ulink url="smb.conf.5.html#USERNAMELEVEL">username level</ulink> = <replaceable>integer</replaceable>
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+By default Samba will lower case the username before attempting to lookup the user
+in the database of local system accounts. Because UNIX usernames conventionally
+only contain lower case character, the <parameter>username level</parameter> parameter
+is rarely needed.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+However, passwords on UNIX systems often make use of mixed case characters.
+This means that in order for a user on a Windows 9x client to connect to a Samba
+server using clear text authentication, the <parameter>password level</parameter>
+must be set to the maximum number of upper case letter which <emphasis>could</emphasis>
+appear is a password. Note that the server OS uses the traditional DES version
+of crypt(), a <parameter>password level</parameter> of 8 will result in case
+insensitive passwords as seen from Windows users. This will also result in longer
+login times as Samba has to compute the permutations of the password string and
+try them one by one until a match is located (or all combinations fail).
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The best option to adopt is to enable support for encrypted passwords
+where ever Samba is used. There are three configuration possibilities
+for support of encrypted passwords:
+</para>
+
+</sect3>
+<sect3>
+<title>Use MS Windows NT as an authentication server</title>
+
+<para>
+This method involves the additions of the following parameters in the &smb.conf; file:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ encrypt passwords = Yes
+ security = server
+ password server = "NetBIOS_name_of_PDC"
+</programlisting></para>
+
+
+<para>
+There are two ways of identifying whether or not a username and
+password pair was valid or not. One uses the reply information provided
+as part of the authentication messaging process, the other uses
+just an error code.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The down-side of this mode of configuration is the fact that
+for security reasons Samba will send the password server a bogus
+username and a bogus password and if the remote server fails to
+reject the username and password pair then an alternative mode
+of identification of validation is used. Where a site uses password
+lock out after a certain number of failed authentication attempts
+this will result in user lockouts.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+Use of this mode of authentication does require there to be
+a standard Unix account for the user, this account can be blocked
+to prevent logons by other than MS Windows clients.
+</para>
+
+</sect3>
+</sect2>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>Domain Level Security</title>
+
+<para>
+When samba is operating in <emphasis>security = domain</emphasis> mode this means that
+the Samba server has a domain security trust account (a machine account) and will cause
+all authentication requests to be passed through to the domain controllers.
+</para>
+
+<sect3>
+<title>Samba as a member of an MS Windows NT security domain</title>
+
+<para>
+This method involves addition of the following parameters in the &smb.conf; file:
+</para>
+
+<para><programlisting>
+ encrypt passwords = Yes
+ security = domain
+ workgroup = "name of NT domain"
+ password server = *
+</programlisting></para>
+
+<para>
+The use of the "*" argument to <command>password server</command> will cause samba to locate the
+domain controller in a way analogous to the way this is done within MS Windows NT.
+This is the default behaviour.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+In order for this method to work the Samba server needs to join the
+MS Windows NT security domain. This is done as follows:
+</para>
+
+<itemizedlist>
+ <listitem><para>On the MS Windows NT domain controller using
+ the Server Manager add a machine account for the Samba server.
+ </para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Next, on the Linux system execute:
+ <command>smbpasswd -r PDC_NAME -j DOMAIN_NAME</command> (samba 2.x)
+
+ <command>net join -U administrator%password</command> (samba-3)
+ </para></listitem>
+</itemizedlist>
+
+<para>
+Use of this mode of authentication does require there to be a standard Unix account
+for the user in order to assign a uid once the account has been authenticated by
+the remote Windows DC. This account can be blocked to prevent logons by clients other than
+MS Windows through things such as setting an invalid shell in the
+<filename>/etc/passwd</filename> entry.
+</para>
+
+<para>
+An alternative to assigning UIDs to Windows users on a Samba member server is
+presented in the <link linkend="winbind">Winbind Overview</link> chapter
+in this HOWTO collection.
+</para>
+
+</sect3>
+</sect2>
+
+<sect2>
+<title>ADS Level Security</title>
+
+<para>
+For information about the configuration option please refer to the entire section entitled
+<emphasis>Samba as an ADS Domain Member.</emphasis>
+</para>
+
+</sect2>
+</sect1>
+</chapter>