Directory Services/Active Directory

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner's Blog
Access-based Enumeration - Part 2
Remember Access-based Enumeration (ABE)? I posted about it a short time ago. ABE will hide the folders and files underneath a share if the user who is mapped to the share has no permissions to read them. It's really great to "clean up" your fileservers for your users - they only have to bother about data they are able to access.
However, I've received a few questions about ABE. First of all - the tool to configure it - ABETool.exe - wasn't published with the final release of Service Pack 1. It will be available as download and will be published on microsoft.com together with a Whitepaper explaining ABE. Right now you can either programmatically change the share properties with the provided API, or use the ShareFlags-Tool (ShrFlgs) from Joe Richards. I have no information about the promised option to configure it in the GUI, maybe it will be in the same download - we'll see as soon as it's published.
ABE will hide Folders and Files, and will do it not only in the parent folder but also in subfolders. There may be a bit slower performance since enabling ABE means that the server has to validate the rights on files/folders underneath the current folder when opening it - without ABE there's no reason to do so because as long as you have sufficient permissions on the parent folder you'll see everything underneath. I don't expect that much of a performance issue, but real life will tell us soon.
Here's a example of ABE - the top two pictures are the view of a user who has only read rights on the ACC-Folders and ACC.TXT-Files, the bottom two pictuers are the view of an Administrator (yes - ABE applies to users only, and only remotely via the share where ABE is enabled. If the user is logging on locally or over a different share without ABE he'll see everything.

Published Thu, Apr 7 2005 6:50 by Ulf B. Simon-Weidner

Comments

# re: Hide folders underneath a share where the user has no permissions@ Thursday, April 07, 2005 4:02 PM

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# re: Access-based Enumeration - Part 2@ Friday, April 08, 2005 3:21 PM

This is huge Ulf! Thanks...

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner

# re: Access-based Enumeration - Part 2@ Thursday, April 28, 2005 3:51 PM

Microsoft have now released a GUI tool to configure ABDE (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04A563D9-78D9-4342-A485-B030AC442084&displaylang=en)

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner

# re: Access-based Enumeration - Part 2@ Thursday, April 28, 2005 5:53 PM

Hi Slavko,

yes, thanks for the link. It actually contains a GUI extension, a CMD-Tool and the Whitepaper for ABE.

I'll be blogging an updates with screenshots when I have a couple minutes to spare.

Ulf

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner