NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM VS DOMAIN\Machine$ - sql-server

Here is what happened. I run a web application on windows server 2008 R2. The app pool it uses runs under LocalSystem account. The application complained about "NT Authority\SYSTEM" not having access to my database, so i added that user to the database. It all worked fine until yesterday, when the application started complaining about "Development\MyMachineName$" not having access to my database. The app pool still is running under "LocalSystem" account. I am confused why is it now changed the identity.
While playing around i ended up removing my username from sql server security. My sql server 2012 instance is running in windows authentication mode. now i cant connect to the sql instance. to fix this found someone suggested to use "psexec -i -s ssms" to launch management studio under "NT Authority\System" account. when i tried this the management studio tries to log on with "Development\MyMachineName$" as well. i am now wondering what happened to "NT Authority\SYSTEM" identity.
Thanks in advance for the upcoming help :)
EDIT:
My SQL Server instance is on same machine as the web application. i.e. its a dev machine where is have iis and sql server running for development.

Lots of stuff going on here, so hopefully this will clarify things for you.
I run a web application on windows server 2008 R2. The app pool it
uses runs under LocalSystem account. The application complained about
"NT Authority\SYSTEM" not having access to my database, so i added
that user to the database.
If the database server is local to the IIS server, that's fine (though I would still use a domain account to run the app pool). If the database server is remote from the IIS Server then the "local system" pool with attempt to authenticate a network resource which will transition to using the computer account Domain\Computer$ (as would network service).
It all worked fine until yesterday, when the application started
complaining about "Development\MyMachineName$" not having access to my
database. The app pool still is running under "LocalSystem" account.
I can't tell from your question if these are the same server or not, more clarification would be needed.
While playing around i ended up removing my username from sql server
security. My sql server 2012 instance is running in windows
authentication mode. now i cant connect to the sql instance. to fix
this found someone suggested to use "psexec -i -s ssms" to launch
management studio under "NT Authority\System" account. when i tried
this the management studio tries to log on with
"Development\MyMachineName$" as well. i am now wondering what happened
to "NT Authority\SYSTEM" identity.
NT Authority\System is a special built in identity and does not traverse network resources, if it needs to it auths as the computer account Domain\Computer$. I don't know the whole setup from your text but for the psexec to work, it'd have to start ssms on the database server or it will continue to use the computer account. If you need access back, be a member of the server admins windows group and start SQL Server up in single user mode - connect with windows authentication (locally) and add your login back in.
We'd need a infrastructure diagram to get more into it, but the basics are:
Built in identities and accounts can't authenticate on a network unless they use the computer object.
Built in identities and accounts are only good for the server they are on and local to.
Giving permissions to anyone who could access that computer (through the computer object) is grossly over-provisioning permissions.
If you are running an application, the identity if yours so you could have been authenticating with your account the whole time testing. While individual threads can have different identities, most applications inherit the identity that spawned the process and in this case is most likely yours.

I think i figured it out. The reason was that when connection string uses computer name then it forwards "MACHINE$" as identity but when it is using localhost then it forwards "SYSTEM" as identity.

Related

SSIS/Integration Server Access Issue - No Local Admin rights

I am trying to find a solution to three issues I have encountered recently relating to SQL Server 2014. I am not an expert with this stuff by any means, but I've sort of fallen into needing to learn it in my current role. I went from never using SSMS a few months ago to (Trying) to teach myself how to use SSIS and SSRS. I've made a ton of progress, but now I'm stuck actually getting everything automated the way I want it.
The biggest challenge, and root of all my problems, stems from the fact that I am not a local admin on my machine. It was great to finally get IT to install the programs, but they do not want to give me, or anyone not in IT in my company, local admin access. Apart from asking my director to try to convince them to do so, I'm hoping for some solutions that would mean I don't have to call them every day to run these programs.
My integration server is running, I've got my SSIS packages built, but I can't connect to the Integration Server through SSMS, as I am not a local admin on my machine. I've read about going through dcomcnfg settings for REMOTE access issues, but I'm worried that won't help here since I'm trying to do this from the local machine and it still doesn't work. Any ideas as to how I can change the settings so that it runs for non-admin accounts or just make it work?
SSRS: I've built a report, and want to deploy it, but I don't have access to the reporting services configuration manager either. For whatever reason my reporting server is stopped in the server configuration manager. When I click on it, it says to use reporting services config mgr to tweak settings, so a bit stuck. Appears to be the same issue - not a local admin. Again, are there any settings I can change (getting IT to log in as an admin and walking them through what to change is my only choice, essentially).
SQL Server agent appears to be the same issue...
I could probably run my reports now, but it would be so much nicer to use these programs to the full extent. Any help would be appreciated here. I tried to research as much as possible, but most solutions seem to relate to logging on myself as an admin, running things as admin, etc, and I just can't do that.
Thanks!
You do not need to be local admin on your machine, SSIS and SSAS require Windows Authentication to log on remotely to the server via SSMS and publishing anything to the server from BIDS / SSDT Visual Studio Shell also requires WinAuth, though you can work locally and then swap the package to the server via Ctrl-C, and also instead of deploying SSRS you can login directly to the report manager and upload an RDL file (report). To start and stop SQL Agent services you need Windows Authentication via SSMS (in your setup), but to view the SQL Agent you must be in the SQL Server SysAdmin role (or at a grain level SQL Agent Reader via the MSDB rights.
I recommend you attempt to not get local administrator rights and instead ask 'merely' for rights to read and write to the server drives, and to manage only the aspects of SQL Server and it's services with a domain login on the server. You will require this anyway to check ingress and egress file locations and debug production issues (unless you have FTP to the box).
You do not have access to stop or start SQL Agent from your client SSMS also because I believe you are accessing it via SQL Authentication, which is not ideal or secure. But if you do not see the agent on the bottom left of SSMS it is because you do not have rights. If you see the Agent and it is red then the service is disabled and must be started.
You will need to get direct access to the SQL box (and you do not need local admin to manage SQL Server, just a domain account with some service rights and drive rights). If your system administrators are running SQL Server under Local Admin, then they should not be managing SQL Server in the first place (see my write up hyperlinked below).
The SSRS Team at Microsoft has merged into the SharePoint team, and SharePoint 2013 wraps up all of the BI tools right into it, so that is something you should also consider if you plan on building out a BI shop at your firm, i.e. you may not have to if you already have SharePoint installed.
Good luck, don't get discouraged.
What user account would you recommend running the SQL Server Express 2008 services in a development environment?

Why is my Web Application not using AppPoolIdentity to log in to SQL Server on same machine?

Basic Problem:
I have a web application that accesses a SQL Server database on the same machine. The web app runs under its own app pool - let us call it MyAppPool. If I goto advanced settings in IIS Manager, I can see that MyAppPool runs under ApplicationPoolIdentity. When I make requests to the web app, I can open task manager and verify that the username of w3wp.exe is MyAppPool. In SQL Server, I have added a Windows User IIS AppPool\MyAppPool and given it necessary permissions to read from db. The problem is that I am getting a login failed for DOMAIN\MACHINE$ when a logon is attempted to SQL Server. Its beyond me. Why is the app not logging on as IIS AppPool\MyAppPool?
Details:
I know variants of this question have been asked elsewhere, but I am really stuck without a solution. I experimented adding a <identity impersonate="true" /> to the web.config. If I do this, I get a login failed for NT AUTHORITY\IUSR. I have tried accessing the web app from the machine on which it is hosted and get same login error. I am running IIS8, Windows Server 2012, and SQL Server 2012.
Closest question I could find is Why is my MVC app trying to log into my DB as my machine, and not as the App Pool identity?, and the solutions provided do not work. I cannot change Integrated Security to be false (I had this thing running in the past). Quoting https://stackoverflow.com/a/15145488/147530:
ApplicationPoolIdentity uses IIS AppPool\ApplicationPool for local
access, but DOMAIN\MACHINE-NAME$ for remote access
sounds reasonable. Question is why is ApplicationPoolIdentity not using IIS AppPool\MyAppPool identity when db is hosted on same machine??
Quoting another SO post, IIS application using application pool identity loses primary token?:
This application also connects to a SQL Server database using
Integrated Security=true in the connection string. If the database is
local, then we see that IIS APPPOOL\OurAppPoolName is used to connect
to the database; if the database is remote, then the machine account
OURDOMAIN\ourwebserver$ is used.
This is the behavior I want, but not getting it, and that is what I am asking in this question - I don't want to give permissions to DOMAIN\MACHINE-NAME$ to log onto SQL Server. Quoting https://stackoverflow.com/a/15445280/147530:
I think that's a bad idea, however, because it authorizes any program
running as NetworkService to access the database - not just your web
applications.
I tried one more thing, which was to enable Windows Authentication on IIS8 using this link http://www.iis.net/learn/install/installing-iis-85/installing-iis-85-on-windows-server-2012-r2#ModulesinIIS85 but this has also not solved the problem.
Fixed this problem. In SSMS, there is a path machine -> security -> logins which contains users who can log onto the machine. I had not added the apppool to this list. I had only added the apppool to machine -> databases -> my database -> security -> users

SQL Server 2012 Integration Services failed when connecting thru SSMS

I had recently installed SQL server 2012 and I used mostly the default settings. Database works fine and I can happily connect using SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) but when I connect to the Integration Services Server I get this message
Connecting to the Integration Services service on the computer
"localhost" failed with the following error: "Access is denied."
By default, only administrators have access to the Integration
Services service. On Windows Vista and later, the process must be
running with administrative privileges in order to connect to the
Integration Services service. See the help topic for information on
how to configure access to the service.
here is the screenshot
I am not sure why but I am the domain admin and have full rights over the server. Also why when I connect from my Desktop it can successfully connect, only if I connect from the server itself which gives me this issues. How do I fix this so that I can make SSMS on the server connect to its Integration Services instance.
As I understand it, User Access Control, or UAC, can basically intercept requests for your group membership so in this case, it appears it was preventing your membership getting passed to SQL Server.
Others have noted in their comments that you may still need to right click and run SSMS as an Administrator.
As noted by an astute observer "This is a quick-fix, not a real solution. People shouldn't just be running stuff as administrator. These security walls are in place for a reason" And I agree. UAC is designed to get Windows users into a Principle of least privilege mindset - only escalate to a powerful account when required. The issue is that SSMS is known to not "play well" with UAC. As I see it, this leaves you with three options
You can turn off UAC and get your work done
Leave UAC on and tell your boss you are unable to work
Write your own query tool that is not affected by UAC
Go to all programs Click on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 folder Right click on SQL Server Management Studio Click on Run as Administrator
This should take care of problem for now. (With this you need to always repeat the same process). To avoid this every time and for a more persistent solution you need to get permission(s). Please do the following process and you should be good.
In previous versions of SQL Server, by default when you installed SQL Server all users in the Users group had access to the Integration Services service. When you install the current release of SQL Server, users do not have access to the Integration Services service. The service is secure by default. After SQL Server is installed, the administrator must grant access to the service.
To grant access to the Integration Services service
Run Dcomcnfg.exe. Dcomcnfg.exe provides a user interface for modifying certain settings in the registry.
In the Component Services dialog, expand the Component Services > Computers > My Computer > DCOM Config node.
Right-click Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services 11.0, and then click Properties.
On the Security tab, click Edit in the Launch and Activation Permissions area.
Add users and assign appropriate permissions, and then click Ok.
Repeat steps 4 - 5 for Access Permissions.
Restart SQL Server Management Studio.
Restart the Integration Services Service.
(Source MSDN)
I hope this will help
Right Click on the Sql Server Management Studio and select Run as Administrator and try to connect
if it is installed on the local instance
You should check to see what user the SSIS Service is running under. Go to Start > Run > Type "services.msc" and scroll down to the SQL Server Integration Services 11.0 entry. Right click and check the properties to find out what user it's running under. The second tab should be the LogOn tab. Since you're just running on a local instance, you can set your user as the LogOn User account and SSIS will have the same permissions that you do.
Lost a day of work on that problem. My package has a .NET script task to copy file from a shared network folder to a local folder and I was stuck with the "access denied" exception every time I tried to execute the package from the server (Through SQL Studio). The package works fine when running locally.
Tried many things picked up here and there and at the end of the day what worked is to create a Job (owner is sa) which execute the package as SSISExecutor.
I have to mention that the file on the network has read access for everyone, and that I still don't understand what was wrong.

Capture Azure VM Image with SQL Server

I have followed these steps https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/windows/how-to-guides/capture-an-image/ to capture an image of a VM. Used sysprep as mentioned and I was able to replicate the VM. The problem is that when I rdp into the machine, I can't connect to SLQ Server. Login fails for Windows Authentication. Usually this means that the SQL Server is on another domain, but in this case the error is on local machine.
So my question is, how to capture an image of a VM with SQL Server in Windows Azure and ensure that I can login with Windows Authentication at least when deployed?
I don't think you can, I think you will need SQL Server Authentication before sysprep (I haven't tested this), as far as I know this is the same on-premises and not an Azure feature per se...
If you run sysprep on Windows, you shouldn't have any expectations that the current principals provisioned in SQL Server will continue to work. SQL Servers references Windows accounts by their SIDs and running sysprep on Windows will create a new set of SIDs for the Windows account. Therefore, you will have to re-add them to SQL Server as you've discovered.
Adding a solution that worked for me, in case anyone facing same problem and haven't found any working solution.
After creating an Azure VM from the Image based on a generalized VM (sysprep run):
Launch SQL Server Configuration Manager.
Navigate to SQL Server Services.
Right click on SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS)->Properties from the right side panel.
Select 'This account:' and enter details of current VM Administrator credentials.
Apply changes and restart SQL Server.
Now, try connecting to the SQL Server. It should work.

SQL Server 2012 can't start because of a login failure

I recently installed Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on a fresh Windows 7 installation, but whenever I want to run the server, I get the following error:
Error 1069: The service did not start due to a logon failure.
The following user is configured to start the service: NT Service\MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS
How can I fix this problem?
The answer to this may be identical to the problem with full blown SQL Server (NTService\MSSQLSERVER) and this is to reset the password. The ironic thing is, there is no password.
Steps are:
Right click on the Service in the Services mmc
Click Properties
Click on the Log On tab
The password fields will appear to have entries in them...
Blank out both Password fields
Click "OK"
This should re-grant access to the service and it should start up again. Weird?
NOTE: if the problem comes back after a few hours or days, then you probably have a group policy which is overriding your settings and it's coming and taking the right away again.
This happened to me. A policy on the domain was taking away the SQL Server user account's "Log on as a service" rights. You can work around this using JLo's solution, but does not address the group policy problem specifically and it will return next time the group policies are refreshed on the machine.
The specific policy causing the issue for me was:
Under, Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignments: Log on as a service
You can see which policies are being applied to your machine by running the command "rsop" from the command line. Follow the path to the policy listed above and you will see its current value as well as which GPO set the value.
While ("run as SYSTEM") works, people should be advised this means going from a minimum-permissions type account to an account which has all permissions in the world. Which is very much not a recommended setup best practices or security-wise.
If you know what you are doing and know your SQL Server will always be run in an isolated environment (i.e. not on hotel or airport wifi) it's probably fine, but this creates a very real attack vector which can completely compromise a machine if on open internets.
This seems to be an error on Microsoft's part and people should be aware of the implications of the workaround posted.
Short answer:
install Remote Server Administration tools on your SQL Server (it's an optional feature of Windows Server), reboot, then run SQL Server configuration manager, access the service settings for each of the services whose logon account starts with "NT Service...", clear out the password fields and restart the service. Under the covers, SQL Server Config manager will assign these virtual accounts the Log On as a Service right, and you'll be on your way.
tl;dr;
There is a catch-22 between default settings for a windows domain and default install of SQL Server 2012.
As mentioned above, default Windows domain setup will indeed prevent you from defining the "log on as a service" right via Group Policy Edit at the local machine (via GUI at least; if you install Powershell ActiveDirectory module (via Remote Server Administration tools download) you can do it by scripting.
And, by default, SQL Server 2012 setup runs services in "virtual accounts" (NT Service\ prefix, e.g, NT Service\MSSQLServer. These are like local machine accounts, not domain accounts, but you still can't assign them log on as service rights if your server is joined to a domain. SQL Server setup attempts to assign the right at install, and the SQL Server Config Management tool likewise attempts to assign the right when you change logon account.
And the beautiful catch-22 is this: SQL Server tools depend on (some component of) RSAT to assign the logon as service right. If you don't happen to have RSAT installed on your member server, SQL Server Config Manager fails silently trying to apply the setting (despite all the gaudy pre-installation verification it runs) and you end up with services that won't start.
The one hint of this requirement that I was able to find in the blizzard of SQL Server and Virtual Account doc was this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143504.aspx#New_Accounts, search for RSAT.
I had a similar issue that was resolved with the following:
In Services.MSC click on the Log On tab and add the user with minimum privileges and password (on the service that is throwing the login error)
By Starting Sql Server to run as Administrator
If the user is a domain user use Domain username and password
One possibility is when installed sql server data tools Bi,
while sql server was already set up.
Solution:-
1.Just Repair the sql server with the set up instance
if solution does not work ,
than its worth your time meddling with services.msc
I don't know how good of a solution this is it, but after following some of the other answer to this question without success, i resolved setting the connection user of the service MSSQLSERVER to "Local Service".
N.B: i'm using SQL Server 2017.

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