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-<chapter id="IntroSMB">
-<chapterinfo>
- &author.dlechnyr;
- <pubdate>April 14, 2003</pubdate>
-</chapterinfo>
-
-<title>Introduction to Samba</title>
-
-<para><quote>
-"If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."
--- Anonymous
-</quote></para>
-
-<para>
-Samba is a file and print server for Windows-based clients using TCP/IP as the underlying
-transport protocol. In fact, it can support any SMB/CIFS-enabled client. One of Samba's big
-strengths is that you can use it to blend your mix of Windows and Linux machines together
-without requiring a separate Windows NT/2000/2003 Server. Samba is actively being developed
-by a global team of about 30 active programmers and was originally developed by Andrew Tridgell.
-</para>
-
-<sect1>
-<title>Background</title>
-
-<para>
-Once long ago, there was a buzzword referred to as DCE/RPC. This stood for Distributed
-Computing Environment/Remote Procedure Calls and conceptually was a good idea. It was
-originally developed by Apollo/HP as NCA 1.0 (Network Computing Architecture) and only
-ran over UDP. When there was a need to run it over TCP so that it would be compatible
-with DECnet 3.0, it was redesigned, submitted to The Open Group, and officially became
-known as DCE/RPC. Microsoft came along and decided, rather than pay $20 per seat to
-license this technology, to reimplement DCE/RPC themselves as MSRPC. From this, the
-concept continued in the form of SMB (Server Message Block, or the "what") using the
-NetBIOS (Network Basic Input/Output System, or the "how") compatibility layer. You can
-run SMB (i.e., transport) over several different protocols; many different implementations
-arose as a result, including NBIPX (NetBIOS over IPX, NwLnkNb, or NWNBLink) and NBT
-(NetBIOS over TCP/IP, or NetBT). As the years passed, NBT became the most common form
-of implementation until the advance of "Direct-Hosted TCP" -- the Microsoft marketing
-term for eliminating NetBIOS entirely and running SMB by itself across TCP port 445
-only. As of yet, direct-hosted TCP has yet to catch on.
-</para>
-
-<para>
-Perhaps the best summary of the origins of SMB are voiced in the 1997 article titled, CIFS:
-Common Insecurities Fail Scrutiny:
-</para>
-
-<para><emphasis>
-Several megabytes of NT-security archives, random whitepapers, RFCs, the CIFS spec, the Samba
-stuff, a few MS knowledge-base articles, strings extracted from binaries, and packet dumps have
-been dutifully waded through during the information-gathering stages of this project, and there
-are *still* many missing pieces... While often tedious, at least the way has been generously
-littered with occurrences of clapping hand to forehead and muttering 'crikey, what are they
-thinking?
-</emphasis></para>
-
-</sect1>
-
-<sect1>
-<title>Terminology</title>
-
-<itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para>
- SMB: Acronym for "Server Message Block". This is Microsoft's file and printer sharing protocol.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- CIFS: Acronym for "Common Internet File System". Around 1996, Microsoft apparently
- decided that SMB needed the word "Internet" in it, so they changed it to CIFS.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- Direct-Hosted: A method of providing file/printer sharing services over port 445/tcp
- only using DNS for name resolution instead of WINS.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- IPC: Acronym for "Inter-Process Communication". A method to communicate specific
- information between programs.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- Marshalling: - A method of serializing (i.e., sequential ordering of) variable data
- suitable for transmission via a network connection or storing in a file. The source
- data can be re-created using a similar process called unmarshalling.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- NetBIOS: Acronym for "Network Basic Input/Output System". This is not a protocol;
- it is a method of communication across an existing protocol. This is a standard which
- was originally developed for IBM by Sytek in 1983. To exaggerate the analogy a bit,
- it can help to think of this in comparison your computer's BIOS -- it controls the
- essential functions of your input/output hardware -- whereas NetBIOS controls the
- essential functions of your input/output traffic via the network. Again, this is a bit
- of an exaggeration but it should help that paradigm shift. What is important to realize
- is that NetBIOS is a transport standard, not a protocol. Unfortunately, even technically
- brilliant people tend to interchange NetBIOS with terms like NetBEUI without a second
- thought; this will cause no end (and no doubt) of confusion.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- NetBEUI: Acronym for the "NetBIOS Extended User Interface". Unlike NetBIOS, NetBEUI
- is a protocol, not a standard. It is also not routable, so traffic on one side of a
- router will be unable to communicate with the other side. Understanding NetBEUI is
- not essential to deciphering SMB; however it helps to point out that it is not the
- same as NetBIOS and to improve your score in trivia at parties. NetBEUI was originally
- referred to by Microsoft as "NBF", or "The Windows NT NetBEUI Frame protocol driver".
- It is not often heard from these days.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- NBT: Acronym for "NetBIOS over TCP"; also known as "NetBT". Allows the continued use
- of NetBIOS traffic proxied over TCP/IP. As a result, NetBIOS names are made
- to IP addresses and NetBIOS name types are conceptually equivalent to TCP/IP ports.
- This is how file and printer sharing are accomplished in Windows 95/98/ME. They
- traditionally rely on three ports: NetBIOS Name Service (nbname) via UDP port 137,
- NetBIOS Datagram Service (nbdatagram) via UDP port 138, and NetBIOS Session Service
- (nbsession) via TCP port 139. All name resolution is done via WINS, NetBIOS broadcasts,
- and DNS. NetBIOS over TCP is documented in RFC 1001 (Concepts and methods) and RFC 1002
- (Detailed specifications).
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- W2K: Acronym for Windows 2000 Professional or Server
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- W3K: Acronym for Windows 2003 Server
- </para></listitem>
-
-</itemizedlist>
-
-<para>If you plan on getting help, make sure to subscribe to the Samba Mailing List (available at
-<ulink url="http://www.samba.org/">http://www.samba.org</ulink>).
-</para>
-
-</sect1>
-
-<sect1>
-<title>Related Projects</title>
-
-<para>
-There are currently two network filesystem client projects for Linux that are directly
-related to Samba: SMBFS and CIFS VFS. These are both available in the Linux kernel itself.
-</para>
-
-<itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para>
- SMBFS (Server Message Block File System) allows you to mount SMB shares (the protocol
- that Microsoft Windows and OS/2 Lan Manager use to share files and printers
- over local networks) and access them just like any other Unix directory. This is useful
- if you just want to mount such filesystems without being a SMBFS server.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- CIFS VFS (Common Internet File System Virtual File System) is the successor to SMBFS, and
- is being actively developed for the upcoming version of the Linux kernel. The intent of this module
- is to provide advanced network file system functionality including support for dfs (hierarchical
- name space), secure per-user session establishment, safe distributed caching (oplock),
- optional packet signing, Unicode and other internationalization improvements, and optional
- Winbind (nsswitch) integration.
- </para></listitem>
-
-</itemizedlist>
-
-<para>
-Again, it's important to note that these are implementations for client filesystems, and have
-nothing to do with acting as a file and print server for SMB/CIFS clients.
-</para>
-
-<para>
-There are other Open Source CIFS client implementations, such as the
-<ulink url="http://jcifs.samba.org/">jCIFS project</ulink>
-which provides an SMB client toolkit written in Java.
-</para>
-
-
-</sect1>
-
-
-<sect1>
-<title>SMB Methodology</title>
-
-<para>
-Traditionally, SMB uses UDP port 137 (NetBIOS name service, or netbios-ns),
-UDP port 138 (NetBIOS datagram service, or netbios-dgm), and TCP port 139 (NetBIOS
-session service, or netbios-ssn). Anyone looking at their network with a good
-packet sniffer will be amazed at the amount of traffic generated by just opening
-up a single file. In general, SMB sessions are established in the following order:
-</para>
-
-<itemizedlist>
- <listitem><para>
- "TCP Connection" - establish 3-way handshake (connection) to port 139/tcp
- or 445/tcp.
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- "NetBIOS Session Request" - using the following "Calling Names": The local
- machine's NetBIOS name plus the 16th character 0x00; The server's NetBIOS
- name plus the 16th character 0x20
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- "SMB Negotiate Protocol" - determine the protocol dialect to use, which will
- be one of the following: PC Network Program 1.0 (Core) - share level security
- mode only; Microsoft Networks 1.03 (Core Plus) - share level security
- mode only; Lanman1.0 (LAN Manager 1.0) - uses Challenge/Response
- Authentication; Lanman2.1 (LAN Manager 2.1) - uses Challenge/Response
- Authentication; NT LM 0.12 (NT LM 0.12) - uses Challenge/Response
- Authentication
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- SMB Session Startup. Passwords are encrypted (or not) according to one of
- the following methods: Null (no encryption); Cleartext (no encryption); LM
- and NTLM; NTLM; NTLMv2
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>
- SMB Tree Connect: Connect to a share name (e.g., \\servername\share); Connect
- to a service type (e.g., IPC$ named pipe)
- </para></listitem>
-
-</itemizedlist>
-
-<para>
-A good way to examine this process in depth is to try out
-<ulink url="http://www.securityfriday.com/ToolDownload/SWB/swb_doc.html">SecurityFriday's SWB program</ulink>.
-It allows you to walk through the establishment of a SMB/CIFS session step by step.
-</para>
-
-</sect1>
-
-<sect1>
-<title>Epilogue</title>
-
-<para><quote>
-What's fundamentally wrong is that nobody ever had any taste when they
-did it. Microsoft has been very much into making the user interface look good,
-but internally it's just a complete mess. And even people who program for Microsoft
-and who have had years of experience, just don't know how it works internally.
-Worse, nobody dares change it. Nobody dares to fix bugs because it's such a
-mess that fixing one bug might just break a hundred programs that depend on
-that bug. And Microsoft isn't interested in anyone fixing bugs -- they're interested
-in making money. They don't have anybody who takes pride in Windows 95 as an
-operating system.
-</quote></para>
-
-<para><quote>
-People inside Microsoft know it's a bad operating system and they still
-continue obviously working on it because they want to get the next version out
-because they want to have all these new features to sell more copies of the
-system.
-</quote></para>
-
-<para><quote>
-The problem with that is that over time, when you have this kind of approach,
-and because nobody understands it, because nobody REALLY fixes bugs (other than
-when they're really obvious), the end result is really messy. You can't trust
-it because under certain circumstances it just spontaneously reboots or just
-halts in the middle of something that shouldn't be strange. Normally it works
-fine and then once in a blue moon for some completely unknown reason, it's dead,
-and nobody knows why. Not Microsoft, not the experienced user and certainly
-not the completely clueless user who probably sits there shivering thinking
-"What did I do wrong?" when they didn't do anything wrong at all.
-</quote></para>
-
-<para><quote>
-That's what's really irritating to me."
-</quote></para>
-
-<para>--
-<ulink url="http://hr.uoregon.edu/davidrl/boot.txt">Linus Torvalds, from an interview with BOOT Magazine, Sept 1998</ulink>
-</para>
-
-</sect1>
-
-<sect1>
-<title>Miscellaneous</title>
-
-<!--FIXME: This really needs to go... -->
-
-<para>
-This chapter is Copyright 2003 David Lechnyr (david at lechnyr dot com).
-Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms
-of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free
-Software Foundation. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt.
-</para>
-
-</sect1>
-</chapter>