Topic: Install OpenVPN Lab Ex.

No: 1

1)Lab Scenario: (Problem Statement/Case Study/Use cases)

Installing OpenVPN for the attack, access and management.

2)Lab Objective: (Objective of the Lab Exercise)

To perform AD management and Directories, OpenVPN should be installed.

3)Lab Environment: (OS/Tools to be used)

Try Hack Me

4)Lab Tasks: (Questions)

To perform this, we need 7 days of Streak in Try Hack Me.

\5)Steps to achieve the task: (Windows)

1. Download and Install OpenVPN GUI

2. From THM(Try Hack Me), download the configuration file.
3. Import the generated file (ex.: filename.ovpn) into OpenVPN and click connect.
4. Once connected, try pinging 10.10.10.10 in command prompt. Data transfer communications
should happen. So that the local mechine is properly configured via OpenVPN.
5. After connecting, start the Mahine in THM.

Chapter Title: Active Directory

Topic: User and Group Management Lab Ex. No: 2

1)Lab Scenario: (Problem Statement/Case Study/Use cases)

You are an Admin and you are tasked to manage Users and Groups
2)Lab Objective: (Objective of the Lab Exercise)

Your first task as the new domain administrator is to check the existing AD OUs and users, as
some recent changes have happened to the business. You have been given the following
organizational chart and are expected to make changes to the AD to match it:

3)Lab Environment: (OS/Tools to be used)

Try Hack Me – AD

4)Lab Tasks: (Questions)

To perform this, we need 7 days of Streak in Try Hack Me.

5)Steps to achieve the task:

Your first task as the new domain administrator is to check the

existing AD OUs and users, as some recent changes have happened to the
business. You have been given the following organisational chart and are
expected to make changes to the AD to match it:
Deleting extra OUs and users

The first thing you should notice is that there is an additional department
OU in your current AD configuration that doesn't appear in the chart.
We've been told it was closed due to budget cuts and should be removed
from the domain. If you try to right-click and delete the OU, you will get
the following error:

By default, OUs are protected against accidental deletion. To delete the OU,
we need to enable the Advanced Features in the View menu:
This will show you some additional containers and enable you to disable the
accidental deletion protection. To do so, right-click the OU and go to
Properties. You will find a checkbox in the Object tab to disable the
protection:
Be sure to uncheck the box and try deleting the OU again. You will be
prompted to confirm that you want to delete the OU, and as a result, any
users, groups or OUs under it will also be deleted.

After deleting the extra OU, you should notice that for some of the
departments, the users in the AD don't match the ones in our
organisational chart. Create and delete users as needed to match them.
6)Output:

Screenshot for the traffic (Requests and Responses) captured

Chapter Title: Active Directory

Topic: Managing Users in AD Lab Ex. No: 3

1)Lab Scenario: (Problem Statement/Case Study/Use cases)

You are tasked to give an user delegate control over another OU

2)Lab Objective: (Objective of the Lab Exercise)

To give a user cross functional access for the data management / data process functions.

3)Lab Environment: (OS/Tools to be used)

Try Hack Me – AD

4)Lab Tasks: (Questions)

To perform this, we need 7 days of Streak in Try Hack Me.

5)Steps to achieve the task:

Your first task as the new domain administrator is to check the

existing AD OUs and users, as some recent changes have happened to the
business. You have been given the following organisational chart and are
expected to make changes to the AD to match it:
Deleting extra OUs and users

The first thing you should notice is that there is an additional department
OU in your current AD configuration that doesn't appear in the chart.
We've been told it was closed due to budget cuts and should be removed
from the domain. If you try to right-click and delete the OU, you will get
the following error:

By default, OUs are protected against accidental deletion. To delete the OU,
we need to enable the Advanced Features in the View menu:
This will show you some additional containers and enable you to disable the
accidental deletion protection. To do so, right-click the OU and go to
Properties. You will find a checkbox in the Object tab to disable the
protection:

Be sure to uncheck the box and try deleting the OU again. You will be
prompted to confirm that you want to delete the OU, and as a result, any
users, groups or OUs under it will also be deleted.
After deleting the extra OU, you should notice that for some of the
departments, the users in the AD don't match the ones in our
organisational chart. Create and delete users as needed to match them.

Delegation

One of the nice things you can do in AD is to give specific users some
control over some OUs. This process is known as delegation and allows you
to grant users specific privileges to perform advanced tasks on OUs without
needing a Domain Administrator to step in.

One of the most common use cases for this is granting IT support the
privileges to reset other low-privilege users' passwords. According to our
organisational chart, Phillip is in charge of IT support, so we'd probably
want to delegate the control of resetting passwords over the Sales,
Marketing and Management OUs to him.

For this example, we will delegate control over the Sales OU to Phillip. To
delegate control over an OU, you can right-click it and select Delegate
Control:
This should open a new window where you will first be asked for the users
to whom you want to delegate control:

Note: To avoid mistyping the user's name, write "phillip" and click the Check
Names button. Windows will autocomplete the user for you.
Click OK, and on the next step, select the following option:
Click next a couple of times, and now Phillip should be able to reset
passwords for any user in the sales department. While you'd probably want
to repeat these steps to delegate the password resets of the Marketing and
Management departments, we'll leave it here for this task. You are free to
continue to configure the rest of the OUs if you so desire.

Now let's use Phillip's account to try and reset Sophie's password. Here are
Phillip's credentials for you to log in via RDP:

Username phillip

Password Claire2008

Note: When connecting via RDP, use THM\phillip as the username to specify
you want to log in using the user phillip on the THM domain.While you may
be tempted to go to Active Directory Users and Computers to try and test
Phillip's new powers, he doesn't really have the privileges to open it, so you'll
have to use other methods to do password resets. In this case, we will be
using Powershell to do so:

WindowsPowerShell(As Phillip)
PS C:\Users\phillip> Set-ADAccountPassword sophie -Reset -NewPassword (Read-Host -
AsSecureString -Prompt 'New Password') -Verbose

New Password: *********

VERBOSE: Performing the operation "Set-ADAccountPassword" on target

"CN=Sophie,OU=Sales,OU=THM,DC=thm,DC=local".

Since we wouldn't want Sophie to keep on using a password we know, we

can also force a password reset at the next logon with the following
command:

WindowsPowerShell(as Phillip)
PS C:\Users\phillip> Set-ADUser -ChangePasswordAtLogon $true -Identity sophie -
Verbose

VERBOSE: Performing the operation "Set" on target

"CN=Sophie,OU=Sales,OU=THM,DC=thm,DC=local".

Log into Sophie's account with your new password and

retrieve a flag from Sophie's desktop.

Note: When connecting via RDP, use THM\sophie as the username to specify
you want to log in using the user sophie on the THM domain.
 Chapter Title: Active Directory

Topic: Managing Computers in AD Lab Ex. No: 4

1)Lab Scenario: (Problem Statement/Case Study/Use cases)

You are tasked to Manage the Computers by assigning new tasks

2)Lab Objective: (Objective of the Lab Exercise)

To create a new OUs and Manage the Computers allotted to different groups

3)Lab Environment: (OS/Tools to be used)

Try Hack Me – AD

4)Lab Tasks: (Questions)

To perform this, we need 7 days of Streak in Try Hack Me.

5)Steps to achieve the task:

By default, all the machines that join a domain (except for the DCs) will be
put in the container called "Computers". If we check our DC, we will see
that some devices are already there:

We can see some servers, some laptops and some PCs corresponding to the
users in our network. Having all of our devices there is not the best idea
since it's very likely that you want different policies for your servers and the
machines that regular users use on a daily basis.

While there is no golden rule on how to organise your machines, an

excellent starting point is segregating devices according to their use. In
general, you'd expect to see devices divided into at least the three following
categories:

1. Workstations

Workstations are one of the most common devices within an Active

Directory domain. Each user in the domain will likely be logging into a
workstation. This is the device they will use to do their work or normal
browsing activities. These devices should never have a privileged user signed
into them.

2. Servers

Servers are the second most common device within an Active Directory
domain. Servers are generally used to provide services to users or other
servers.

3. Domain Controllers

Domain Controllers are the third most common device within an Active
Directory domain. Domain Controllers allow you to manage the Active
Directory Domain. These devices are often deemed the most sensitive devices
within the network as they contain hashed passwords for all user accounts
within the environment.

Since we are tidying up our AD, let's create two separate OUs
for Workstations and Servers (Domain Controllers are already in
an OU created by Windows). We will be creating them directly under
the thm.local domain container. In the end, you should have the
following OU structure:

Now, move the personal computers and laptops to the Workstations OU and
the servers to the Servers OU from the Computers container. Doing so will
allow us to configure policies for each OU later.

Chapter Title: Active Directory

Topic: Group Policies in AD Lab Ex. No: 5

1)Lab Scenario: (Problem Statement/Case Study/Use cases)

For each OU, we have to deploy separate policies and rules.

2)Lab Objective: (Objective of the Lab Exercise)

To deploy individual policies for each OU and we can push different configurations and security
baselines to users depending on their department.
3)Lab Environment: (OS/Tools to be used)

Try Hack Me – AD

4)Lab Tasks: (Questions)

To perform this, we need 7 days of Streak in Try Hack Me.

5)Steps to achieve the task:

Windows manages such policies through Group Policy Objects (GPO). GPOs
are simply a collection of settings that can be applied to OUs. GPOs can
contain policies aimed at either users or computers, allowing you to set a
baseline on specific machines and identities.

To configure GPOs, you can use the Group Policy Management tool,
available from the start menu:
The first thing you will see when opening it is your complete OU hierarchy,
as defined before. To configure Group Policies, you first create
a GPO under Group Policy Objects and then link it to the OU where you
want the policies to apply. As an example, you can see there are some
already existing GPOs in your machine:
We can see in the image above that 3 GPOs have been created. From those,
the Default Domain Policy and RDP Policy are linked to the thm.local domain as
a whole, and the Default Domain Controllers Policy is linked to the Domain
Controllers OU only. Something important to have in mind is that any GPO
will apply to the linked OU and any sub-OUs under it. For example,
the Sales OU will still be affected by the Default Domain Policy.

Let's examine the Default Domain Policy to see what's inside a GPO. The first
tab you'll see when selecting a GPO shows its scope, which is where the GPO
is linked in the AD. For the current policy, we can see that it has only been
linked to the thm.local domain:
As you can see, you can also apply Security Filtering to GPOs so that they
are only applied to specific users/computers under an OU. By default, they
will apply to the Authenticated Users group, which includes all users/PCs.

The Settings tab includes the actual contents of the GPO and lets us know
what specific configurations it applies. As stated before, each GPO has
configurations that apply to computers only and configurations that apply
to users only. In this case, the Default Domain Policy only contains Computer
Configurations:
Feel free to explore the GPO and expand on the available items using the
"show" links on the right side of each configuration. In this case, the Default
Domain Policy indicates really basic configurations that should apply to most
domains, including password and account lockout policies:
Since this GPO applies to the whole domain, any change to it would affect
all computers. Let's change the minimum password length policy to require
users to have at least 10 characters in their passwords. To do this, right-
click the GPO and select Edit:

This will open a new window where we can navigate and edit all the
available configurations. To change the minimum password length, go
to Computer Configurations -> Policies -> Windows Setting -> Security Settings ->
Account Policies -> Password Policy and change the required policy value:
As you can see, plenty of policies can be established in a GPO. While
explaining every single of them would be impossible in a single room, do feel
free to explore a bit, as some of the policies are straightforward. If more
information on any of the policies is needed, you can double-click them and
read the Explain tab on each of them:

GPO distribution

GPOs are distributed to the network via a network share called SYSVOL,
which is stored in the DC. All users in a domain should typically have access
to this share over the network to sync their GPOs periodically. The SYSVOL
share points by default to the C:\Windows\SYSVOL\sysvol\ directory on each of
the DCs in our network.
Once a change has been made to any GPOs, it might take up to 2 hours for
computers to catch up. If you want to force any particular computer to
sync its GPOs immediately, you can always run the following command on
the desired computer:

WindowsPowerShell
PS C:\> gpupdate /force

Creating some GPOs for THM Inc.

As part of our new job, we have been tasked with implementing some GPOs
to allow us to:

1. Block non-IT users from accessing the Control Panel.

2. Make workstations and servers lock their screen automatically after 5
minutes of user inactivity to avoid people leaving their sessions
exposed.
Let's focus on each of those and define what policies we should enable in
each GPO and where they should be linked.

Restrict Access to Control Panel

We want to restrict access to the Control Panel across all machines to only
the users that are part of the IT department. Users of other departments
shouldn't be able to change the system's preferences.

Let's create a new GPO called Restrict Control Panel Access and open it for
editing. Since we want this GPO to apply to specific users, we will look
under User Configuration for the following policy:

Notice we have enabled the Prohibit Access to Control Panel and PC

settings policy.

Once the GPO is configured, we will need to link it to all of the OUs
corresponding to users who shouldn't have access to the Control Panel of
their PCs. In this case, we will link the Marketing, Management and Sales OUs by
dragging the GPO to each of them:

Auto Lock Screen GPO

For the first GPO, regarding screen locking for workstations and servers, we
could directly apply it over the Workstations, Servers and Domain Controllers OUs
we created previously.

While this solution should work, an alternative consists of simply applying

the GPO to the root domain, as we want the GPO to affect all of our
computers. Since the Workstations, Servers and Domain Controllers OUs are all
child OUs of the root domain, they will inherit its policies.
Note: You might notice that if our GPO is applied to the root domain, it will
also be inherited by other OUs like Sales or Marketing. Since these OUs contain
users only, any Computer Configuration in our GPO will be ignored by them.

Let's create a new GPO, call it Auto Lock Screen, and edit it. The policy to
achieve what we want is located in the following route:

We will set the inactivity limit to 5 minutes so that computers get locked
automatically if any user leaves their session open. After closing
the GPO editor, we will link the GPO to the root domain by dragging
the GPO to it:
Once the GPOs have been applied to the correct OUs, we can log in as any
users in either Marketing, Sales or Management for verification. For this
task, let's connect via RDP using Mark's credentials:

Username Mark

Password M4rk3t1ng.21

Note: When connecting via RDP, use THM\Mark as the username to specify
you want to log in using the user Mark on the THM domain.
If we try opening the Control Panel, we should get a message indicating this
operation is denied by the administrator. You can also wait 5 minutes to
check if the screen is automatically locked if you want.

Since we didn't apply the control panel GPO on IT, you should still be able
to log into the machine as any of those users and access the control panel.

Note: If you created and linked the GPOs, but for some reason, they still
don't work, remember you can run gpupdate /force to force GPOs to be
updated.