802.1x machine auth w/ certificate authority

Two quick questions ...
I am building a lab for 802.1x, I want to use peap w/ mschap v2 and I want to do machine authentication only. I have AD and CA services running on a test windows 2003 server. I have ACS setup, my AD is connected, my switch is configured and now I am stuck on the CA portion and I am not sure if I am doing it right, I can't seem to find documentation that outlines this piece specific to the scenerio I described above, perhaps someone can give me a hand.
I browse to the CA, request a certificate > advanced certificate request > create and submit request to this CA >
From this point I am suppose to select a certificate template. The docs I have found say to use a "webserver" template and select the option to "export keys to file". When I attempt this the export key option is greyed out. I google and some people say only Enterprise edition supports this, I am running Enterprise R2 so I don't see the problem. All of the other templates available allow me to export except for webserver.
1) my question is for the lab scenerio I detailed above what type of certifcate template should I be using? if your answer is a "webserver" template can you perahps tell me why I cannot export to a file?
2) Do my client machines require a certificate to be installed prior to connecting to the 802.1x switch? from what I read using peap mschap v2 coupled with machine authentication you do not require a certificate on each machine. During initial 802.1x authentication the certificate will be pushed from the ACS over to the client. I believe the one caveat is that the client machine will require to be modified to list the new CA or ACS server as a trusted root authority. I need some clarity on this subject, I will not have the option to install a certicate on each machine prior to 802.1x auth. Please confirm
Any help is appreciated, thanks!
If there are any links that someone can provide that have details on this setup please share

I am going through this process currently also, and I can tell you what I have gathered so far.
These notes are applicable to Machine, or Machine & User authentication, Wired and/or Wireless 802.1x.
The certificate must be present on each client machine in order to connect. The thing that I am finding annoying is that when we used the Microsoft IAS Radius, the certificate enrollment was seamless. The domain clients just seemed to "automatically" have the certificate installed on their machines (pushed down by the Domain), that matches the certificate presented by the IAS Radius server during the authentication process (Of course, because it's all within the same domain). Easy as pie, windows magic...
But suppose we want to use Cisco ACS or our own radius server ? Well the first thing I tried was to use a Certificate signed by our internal Linux CA. The Windows domain administrator was not able to set up the Linux CA as a "trusted intermediate", which I don't fully understand. Instead he asked me to purchase a certificate from a Trusted CA such as Verisign or DigiCert. By the way I found a list of Microsoft trusted Intermediates here:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2592.aspx
The Windows Domain Administrator will do 3 things :
1) Configure Certificate Auto-Enrollment Policy for the Certificate we purchase
2) Configure the Wired & Wireless Autoconfig service settings Group Policy Objects
3) Set the Wired Autoconfig service to start.
I will have to
1) Generate the CSR & Import the puchased signed certificate into the ACS(s).
Now, that said, there must be an easier way to do this! If anyone has notes on whether or not the following is possible, it would be appreciated & interesting:
1) Can the Windows Domain sign my CSR ? If so - how
2) Can the Windows Domain be configured to trust our Linux CA ? If so - how
Good luck to you dot1xers

Similar Messages

Anonymous Identity when using machine auth with Certificates.

I have two different ISE enviroments both using Certificate based machine authentication. One environment uses the Windows Native supplicant the other uses Anyconnect NAM. Both environments get occasional errors upon authentication. For some reason the devices appear to be presenting an identity using "anonymous" and then failing. This happens randomly on several different devices. The same devices will connect properly using the machine certificate as well randomly. So I am a little at a loss since it doesn't happen all the time, the devices will present the proper identity sometimes but not others. Has anyone seen this issue or better yet know how to resolve it?

Hi Mani,
Thanks for the reply.
The Computer account for the 7925 is just located in a custom OU in AD. We want to use this account for authorization only. Basically so that we can allow Windows and non-windows clients to connect to our WLANs, but have all of the authorization done within AD group membership.
That's interesting about the host\machine.domain format. Would I be correct in thinking the "host/" part is already in the original EAP message from the client, or added somewhere along the way, perhaps by the wireless lan controller?
Do you know if there's a way to configure the 7925 to send in this format? After all, it's a host that im authenticating, not a user...
I've had this working on ACS4.2, but only using LDAP for the attribute lookup - and LDAP doesn't care about host vs user. I suppose I could do the same in ACS 5.1 using ldap but would prefer to use the AD integration,
Thanks,
Peter

Certificate Authority is not being seen by windows server 2003 machines

Good Afternoon,
We recently installed a certificate authority using windows server 2008 r2. There was an old certificate authority that had went bad and the role could not be uninstalled on the bad server. The new certificate authority works with windows 2008 machines but
does not work with server 2003 machines. Mainly trying to get the domain controller certificate. At first it was stating that the rpc was unavailable for the CA. I tried to delete the remnants under the sites and services role of the old server. The error
now it states that it can not find a certificate authority. As stated above the newer machines (Server 2008) can see the certificate authority and request certificates but older machines cant. Any assistance on what to do next will be greatly appreciated.
Attached is the error I receive when trying to request a certificate through the CA mmc.
dmg

It is possible to change the hash algorithm a CA uses to support XP and 2003 "out of the box" without the hotfix.
But it would be better to have two CAs in parallel - one using a more modern algorithm and a CA supporting a "legacy" algorithm - and the latter should only be used as long as there are clients that aren't able to validate the other algorithms.
On the CA, start regedit and locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\CertSvc\Configuration\<Your CA>\CSP
I am assuming that the Software CNG provider is used with SHA256 or higher (not with SHA1).
Change CNGHashAlgorithm to SHA1 and restart the CA service.
The setting can be reverted by changing the value back. All certificates and all CRLs signed by this CA will use the new hash algorithm after the restart.

ISE 1.3 Why are Windows endpoints defaulting to 802.1x machine authentication in wireless profile and not User or User&Computer

We are running ISE 1.3 tied to AD with WLC 7.6.130.0. Our ISE has a GoDaddy (none wildcard) certificate loaded for https and EAP. We are just running PEAP. We have a mix of IOS, Android, and Windows 7/8 devices. IOS and Android devices can self create a wireless profile and after entering credentials can connect without issue. Our Windows 7/8 devices, when auto creating a wireless profile are selecting 802.1x machine authentication instead of User authentication or the best option which is machine or user authentication. This is problematic as we do allow for machine authentication but have an authorization rule limiting machine auth to domain controller and ISE connectivity only. This is to allow domain Windows 7/8 devices to have domain connectivity prior to user sign-in but force user auth to get true network connectivity. The problem is why are the Windows devices not auto setting to user authentication (as I think they did when we ran ISE1.2), or the best option which is to allow both types of authentication? I have limited authentication protocols to just EAP CHAP and moved the machine auth profile to the bottom of the list. Neither have helped. I also notice that the Windows 7/8 endpoints have to say allow connectivity several times even though we are using a global and should be trusted certificate authority (probably a separate issue).
Thank you for any help or ideas,

When connecting a windows device to the ISE enabled SSID when there is not a saved wireless profile on that machine, it will connect and auto create the profile. In that profile, 802.1x computer authentication option is chosen by windows. That has to be changed to computer or user for the machine to function correctly on the network.
On 1.2, this behavior was different. The Windows device would auto select user authentication by default. At other customer sites, windows devices auto select user authentication. This of course needs to be changed to user or computer in order to support machine auth, but at least the default behavior of user authentication would allow machines to get on the network and functional easily to begin with.

802.1x, Machine Authentication, Active Directory and eDirectory

Does anyone think this is feasible as a solution...
Problem Definition.
1) Machines all use the netware Client and authenticate to eDirectory initially, then to AD.
2) I want to use ACS, not Free Radius.
3) I don't want to use a 3rd party supplicant.
Possible solution...
Does anyone think it might be possible to authenticate a machine using a certificate into AD before the user logs in using the netware client. My thinking being this... the user (or machine in this case) will have already been identified as trusted (through AD), will be connected to the network when the user submits their netware credentials. This would mean that netware could be left out of the 802.1x process completely and yet the user would still get a single sign on experience.

I did. Basically the scenrio I described in the original post worked.
The only caveat is that user auth still occurs through 802.1x once you submit the user credentials. There are regestry hacks which disable this if you solely want to use machine auth.
hope this helps

Untrusted server cert chain & does not recognize the certificate authority

I have java code that makes an ssl connection to an HTTPS server.
The code workes fine when I connect to a server that has a
certificate that was issued by a recognizable authority.
But when I try to connect to our test HTTPS server which has a
certificate that was created by ourselves for debug, I get this
java exception: "untrusted server cert chain".
When I connect to our test HTTPS server with a browser, I get
this message from the browser in a popup window:
"www.xyz.com is a web site that uses a security certifcate to
identify itself. However netscape 6 does not recognize the
certificate authority that issued this certificate."
At this point I am able to accept the certificate in the popup
window and continue.
Question: In my java code how can I accept a certificate
that was signed by an unrecognizable authority just like the
browser can. Or during debug, how can I set an override
to accept ALL certs no matter what.
Thanks.....Paul

You will have to import your server test certificate into your client machine keystore. By default the keystore will be the 'cacerts' file in JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security, get your server certificate in .pem format and use keytool to import it to the client.
keytool -import -alias <anything> -file <full path of .pem file> -keystore <full path of cacerts file>
The keystore password is 'changeit' by default, keytool comes with the JDK.
The reasoning behind this is to prevent the misuse of test certificates, the client has to consciously import an untrusted certificate. When you install a real certificate on your server the client will be automatically validated if bought from a trusted CA (Thawte, Verisign).
Take a look at the java.security.KeyStore class, you can use it to view your certificate chain.
Ronny.

Computer certificates expiring within 6 weeks disappearing from machines when computer certificates from two certificate authorities are present

2008 R2 single tier enterprise certificate authority with root certificate expiring within 6 weeks, also domain controller
2012 R2 single tier enterprise certificate authority with root certificate valid for more than the next year, also domain controller
Both servers are approved as certificate authorities for the domain and can issue computer certificates using the computer certificate template. There is a group policy object applied to all workstations that contains an automatic computer certificate request,
but the actual "certificate services client auto-enrollment" element is "not configured". This process seems to work like a round robin in that computers with no certificate can wind up with a certificate from either certificate
authority. I need all PCs to have both certs for a DirectAccess migration. I have successfully used SCCM to ensure all PCs have both certificates using compliance rules and a script using certreq.exe.
A machine will keep both certs until the older computer certificate moves into the 6 week window of expiration, then it gets purged. I have observed this behavior for over a month, even when the CA root certificate wasn't so close to expiring. I
can't figure out what setting is triggering the purge, but need to stop it. Maybe it's coming from default settings in local machine policy for an element that should be disabled in the group policy object supplying the automatic certificate request?
The worst part of this issue is that I can't recreate the purging behavior with gpupdates or restarts on my test machines.

You should not be using Automatic Certificate Request Service (ACRS) for this - it was designed for Windows 2000 and is generally deprecated. Secondly, the reason it is acting like a round-robin as you describe it, is that templates are generally configured
to attempt to renew within 6 weeks of their expiration. Since the 2008 R2 CA is expiring within 6 weeks, it cant issue anything longer than its own remaining lifetime. It is a well known issue that issuing a certificate within the renewal period will cause
problems.
What you should do it use AutoEnrollment and issue a certificate with a very small renewal period (1 week perhaps) by creating a custom V2 template and issuing that from your 2008 R2 CA. Then on the 2012 R2 CA you will need ANOTHER template, as the computer
will only enroll for a certificate from each template. This one can be configured with a normal lifetime and renewal period.
Mark B. Cooper, President and Founder of PKI Solutions Inc., former Microsoft Senior Engineer and subject matter expert for Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS). Known as “The PKI Guy” at Microsoft for 10 years. Connect with Mark at http://www.pkisolutions.com

How to filter certificate templates in Certificate Authority snap-in with the correct values

How to filter certificate templates in Certificate Authority snap-in with the correct values
I have a 2012 R2 server running Microsoft Certificate Authority snap-in.
I want to do a filter on a specific Certificate Template which i know exists in the 'Issued Certificates' folder.
All the documentation i can find seems to suggest i copy the certificate name and use this in the View Filter.
1). I add the 'Certificate Template' option into the Field drop-down.
2). I leave the Operation as the '=' symbol
3). I paste in just the name of the template in question. for example: 'my computers'
The search results always come back blank 'There are no items to show in this view.' even when i know there are many instances of this template. I've tried on a win 2008 server and same issue.
Is there a correct value to enter for the Certificate Template name?
Can this be done easier using certutil commands?
When i run the certutil tool i can confirm i have several issued templates. Certutil -catemplates -v > c:\mytemplate_log.csv
Anybody know what i'm doing wrong?
I seem to be getting nowhere with this one.

> But its important you are using the template name, not the display name
this is incorrect. OIDs are mapped to *display name*, not common name (it is true for all templates except Machine template). That is, in order to translate template name to a corresponding OID, you need to use certificate template's display name. And, IIRC,
template name in the filter can be used only for V1 templates. For V2 and higher, OID must be used.
My weblog: en-us.sysadmins.lv
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PowerShell FCIV tool.

ISE Certificate Authority Certificate

I'm confussed about the certificates:
Some weeks ago a certificate was installed in the ISE to avoid the browser certificate error when the customer access the sponsor portal ...
Now, the customer is requesting to authenticate the sponsor users through LDAPS ... I understand Active Directory or LDAP as External Identity Sources are not secure. So, in order to enable LDAPS we must check the Secure Atuthentication box in the LDAP configuration, but a ROOT CA must be chooseen also.
I understand the ISE should validate the customer PKI in order to validate the user certificate ... Am I right?
Do I need request the customer to provide me the "Certificate Authority Certificate" from its PKI ??
Is it a file completely different to the certificate already loaded in the ISE ??
With this certificate, would the ISE validate the user's computer certificate additional to user and password ??
Would the user must use a computer with certificate in order to access the sponsor portal ??
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Daniel Escalante.

Please follow the "secure authentication tab" in the below table( highlighted)
go to >LDAP Connection Settings
Table lists the fields in the LDAP connection tab and their descriptions.
Table : LDAP Connection Tab
Option Description
Enable Secondary Server
Check this option to enable the secondary LDAP server to be used as a backup in the event that the primary LDAP server fails. If you check this check box, you must enter configuration parameters for the secondary LDAP server.
Primary and Secondary Servers
Hostname/IP
(Required) Enter the IP address or DNS name of the machine that is running the LDAP software. The hostname can contain from 1 to 256 characters or a valid IP address expressed as a string. The only valid characters for hostnames are alphanumeric characters (a to z, A to Z, 0 to 9), the dot (.), and the hyphen (-).
Port
(Required) Enter the TCP/IP port number on which the LDAP server is listening. Valid values are from 1 to 65,535. The default is 389, as stated in the LDAP specification. If you do not know the port number, you can find this information from the LDAP server administrator.
Access
(Required) Anonymous Access—Click to ensure that searches on the LDAP directory occur anonymously. The server does not distinguish who the client is and will allow the client read access to any data that is configured as accessible to any unauthenticated client. In the absence of a specific policy permitting authentication information to be sent to a server, a client should use an anonymous connection.
Authenticated Access—Click to ensure that searches on the LDAP directory occur with administrative credentials. If so, enter information for the Admin DN and Password fields.
Admin DN
Enter the DN of the administrator. The Admin DN is the LDAP account that permits searching of all required users under the User Directory Subtree and permits searching groups. If the administrator specified does not have permission to see the group name attribute in searches, group mapping fails for users who are authenticated by that LDAP.
Password
Enter the LDAP administrator account password.
Secure Authentication
Click to use SSL to encrypt communication between Cisco ISE and the primary LDAP server. Verify that the Port field contains the port number used for SSL on the LDAP server. If you enable this option, you must choose a root CA.
Root CA
Choose a trusted root certificate authority from the drop-down list box to enable secure authentication with a certificate.
See the "Certificate Authority Certificates" section on page 12-17 and "Adding a Certificate Authority Certificate" section on page 12-19 for information on CA certificates.
Server Timeout
Enter the number of seconds that Cisco ISE waits for a response from the primary LDAP server before determining that the connection or authentication with that server has failed. Valid values are 1 to 300. The default is 10.
Max. Admin Connections
Enter the maximum number of concurrent connections (greater than 0) with LDAP administrator account permissions that can run for a specific LDAP configuration. These connections are used to search the directory for users and groups under the User Directory Subtree and the Group Directory Subtree. Valid values are 1 to 99. The default is 20.
Test Bind to Server
Click to test and ensure that the LDAP server details and credentials can successfully bind. If the test fails, edit your LDAP server details and retest.

Windows 7 Wireless Logon - Problems with 802.1X Machine & User Authentication

Hello All,
We’ve had difficulty with our Windows 7 clients authenticating to our wireless network. I’m hoping someone out there has experienced the same thing and can offer some help.
Some info about our environment:
Single Windows 2008 R2 domain with 6 DCs
MS Radius server
Aruba wireless controllers
The Problem:
The client computer boots,
Auths as machine (802.1X successful)
User enters creds
User auth (802.1X successful)
To this point, everything is working normally. Next is where it gets weird.
During the logon process, there is another machine auth
2-5 minutes later another User auth
OS is up and usable (connected to wireless network); however, no homefolder is mapped and GPP didn’t apply properly.
From what I understand, after the user has logged in, Windows never attempts another machine authentication. When the user logs out, Windows can attempt it.
Can anyone offer some insight to what is causing this? I have logs available if anyone is interested.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!
Brett
-- Brett

I did a network trace to gain more insight. I don’t understand why after 802.1X auth is successful on port 1, it then initiates 802.1X auth on port 2.
Can you offer any insight?
10487    3:50:19 PM 8/23/2012    63.0340126
ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX                ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:Port(1 (0x1)): Authentication Starting   {ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:126, NetEvent:5}
10867    3:50:19 PM 8/23/2012    63.3403904
ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX                ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:Port(1 (0x1)): Time taken for this authentication = 281 (0x119) ms
{ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:126, NetEvent:5}
Then >>>
11718    3:50:35 PM 8/23/2012    79.3196653
ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX                ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:OneXDestroySupplicantPort     {ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:126, NetEvent:5}
11938    3:50:36 PM 8/23/2012    80.0530315
ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX                ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:Finished initializing a new port with id=2 (0x2) and friendly name=Dell Wireless 1504 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHz)
{ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:126, NetEvent:5}
11959    3:50:36 PM 8/23/2012    80.0556734
ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX                ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:OneXStartAuthentication           {ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:126,
NetEvent:5}
11964 3:50:36 PM 8/23/2012
80.0557074 svchost.exe (1036)
ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:Port(2 (0x2)): Starting a new 802.1X authentication (MSM initiated)
11965 3:50:36 PM 8/23/2012
80.0557333 svchost.exe (1036)
ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX ONEX_MicrosoftWindowsOneX:Port(2 (0x2)): Authentication Starting
-- Brett

Machine authentication by certificate and windows domain checking

Hi,
We intend to deploy machine?s certificate authentication for wifi users.
We want to check certificate validity of the machine, and also that the machine is included on the windows domain.
We intend to use EAP-TLS :
- One CA server.
- each machine (laptop) retrieves its own certificate from GPO or SMS
- the public certificate of the CA is pushed on the ACS as well as on each of the machine (laptop)
- ACS version is the appliance one
- one ACS remote agent installed on the A.D.
- when a user intends to log on the wifi network :
- the server (ACS appliance) sends its certificate to the client. This client checks the certificate thanks to the CA server certificate he already trusts, results : the client also trusts the ACS?s certificate signed by the CA server .
- the client sends its certificate to the server (ACS appliance). This ACS checks the certificate thanks to the CA server certificate he already trusts, results : the ACS also trusts the client?s certificate signed by the CA server but the ACS also checks that this certificate isn?t revocated (the ACS checks this thanks to the CA server CRL ? certificate revocation list).
Am I right about these previous points ?
And then my question is : is it possible to check that the machine is also included in the windows domain ?
That is, is it possible for the ACS to retrieve the needed field (perhaps CN ?? certificate type "host/....") and then perform an authentication request to the A.D. (active directory) thanks to the ACS remote agent ? We want to perform only machine authentication, not user authentication.
Thanks in advance for your attention.
Best Regards,
Arnaud

Hi Prem,
Thanks for these inputs.
I've passed the logs details to full, performed other tests and retrieved the package.cab.
I've started investigating the 2 log files you pointed.
First, we can see that the requests reach the ACS, so that's a good point.
Then, I'm not sure how to understand the messages.
In the auth.log, we can see the message "no profile match". I guess it is about network access profile. For my purpose (machine authentication by certificate), I don't think Network Access Profiles to be mandatory to be configured.
But I'm not sure this NAP problem to be the root cause of my problem.
And when no NAP is matched, then the default action should accept.
We can see the correct name of the machine (host/...). We can see that he's trying to authenticate this machine "against CSDB". Then we have several lines with "status -2046" but I can't understand what the problem is.
I don't know what CSDB is.
I've configured external user database: for this, I've configured windows database with Remote Agent. The domain is retrieved and added in the domain list. And EAP-TLS machine authentication is enabled.
I copy below an extract of the auth.log.
I also attach parts of auth.log and RDS.log.
If you have any ideas or advices ?
Thanks in advance for your attention.
Best Regards,
Arnaud
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 S 5100 16860 Listening for new TCP connection ------------
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 I 0143 16704 [PDE]: PolicyMgr::CreateContext: new context id=1
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 I 0143 16704 [PDE]: PdeAttributeSet::addAttribute: User-Name=host/nomadev2001.lab.fr
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 I 0143 16704 [PDE]: PolicyMgr::SelectService: context id=1; no profile was matched - using default (0)
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 I 0143 1880 [PDE]: PolicyMgr::Process: request type=5; context id=1; applied default profiles (0) - do nothing
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 I 5388 1880 Attempting authentication for Unknown User 'host/nomadev2001.lab.fr'
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 I 1645 1880 pvAuthenticateUser: authenticate 'host/nomadev2001.lab.fr' against CSDB
AUTH 04/07/2007 12:25:41 I 5081 1880 Done RQ1026, client 50, status -2046

802.1x Machine Based Authentication - Password expired

Hi,
I would like to ask 1 question about machine based authentication on 802.1x.
1.We are deploying 802.1x on wired user.
2.Some user are using machine based authentication in order to authenticate their port.
3.However, after the user password expired, the user need to change their password and then the machine are unable to authenticate. The error i got is "External DB user invalid or bad password". Then switch assign the user to Guest Vlan
4.But, once i plug out the cable and plug in back the UTP cable after the user login, the switch will assigned the user to proper VLAN.
5.User wont be able to access their share drive n etc since the guest vlan only have access to the internet.
5.Anyone have any idea what is happening? It seems that the machine is sending the old password during authentication process to the ACS.
Anybody can shed a light to me. Thanks.

This should certainly work with that rev. On your passed (or failed) auth log, you should see the username of the session authenticating. If you see the FQDN of the machine, this is a machine auth. Also, machine-auth typically executes before the GINA is displayed to the user. It sounds like machine-auth is failing and we need to determine why. Has this machine been away from the domain for long?
This also might help:
http://supportwiki.cisco.com/ViewWiki/index.php/802.1x_authentication_with_Cisco_Secure_Access_Control_Server_fails_to_work_for_Microsoft_Windows_XP_PC

802.1X Machine Authentication ONLY!

Hi. I have a customer who wants to perform 802.1x machine authentication only to prevent users connecting there own devices to the corporate network. The machine credentials will be authenticated via Cisco ACS which will proxy the authentication to ActiveDirectory. If successful, the 802.1x assigns the port to a VLAN. At this point, the port is 'opened up' and the user can recieve an IP address and can then login to the domain as normal (AD username/password) via the network login screen. Is this a workable solution?
I basically want the end user to not notice anything new, but 802.1x operates in the background to authenticate the machine before displaying the network login box. To the user, the PC boots and displays the login box and they login as normal :-) If they bring in their own device, it will fail 802.1x machine authentication and will not get any access.
Has anyone implemented this? Is it a feasible design?
Thanks
Darren

Hi Darren,
good news for you.. you can do this using the "Machine Access Restriction" on both ACS 4.x and ACS 5.x:
* ACS 5.x:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/docs/net_mgmt/cisco_secure_access_control_system/5.2/user/guide/users_id_stores.html#wp1254965
* ACS 4.x:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/docs/net_mgmt/cisco_secure_access_control_server_for_windows/4.2.1/User_Guide/UsrDb.html#wp354105
As soon as the machine performs the 802.1x using the client credentials, the ACS will keep this info on a cache and it will match any further auth attempt (e.g. using the user credentials) for this client using the "Calling-Station-ID", so basically the client's MAC address.
Depending on whether a client performed or not Machine Authentication before, you can decide whether to assign a sort of restricted access/guest VLAN or to deny access.
If the personal client doesn't have a 802.1x supplicant at all, then you can decide to enable the guest vlan feature on the switch itself.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Federico
If this answers your question please mark the question as "answered" and rate it, so other users can easily find it.

Certificate Authority Windows 2008 to 2012 R2 - Clean up and Migration

Hello,
    I'm currently dealing with the following scenario:
1. I've inherited the current infrastructure setup and the plan is to clean things up and setup a new certificate infrastructure using Windows 2012 R2.
2. The current setup:
    a. Domain Controller, Windows 2008 R2, is/was a Certificate Authority. It hasn't issued any new certificates (based on the information in Certificate Effective Date) for quite some time. It also has an expired certificate for
itself - issued by the domain's issuing CA - and attempts to renew it via MMC give a "Server execution failed" and STATUS: Failed when looking in Certificate enrollment for Domain Controller. We'll call the server, DC1.
    b. Certificate Authority Server, we'll call it CERT1. When booting up the machine and/or attempting to restart certificate services on the server, the following errors are in the event log:
EVENT 7024: Description: The Active Directory Certificate Services service terminated with service-specific error %%-2146885613.
EVENT 100: Active Directory Certificate Services did not start: Could not load or verify the current CA certificate. Domainlocal Issuing CA The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. 0x80092013
(-2146885613).
EVENT 48: Description: Revocation status for a certificate in the chain for CA certificate 0 for Domain.local Issuing CA could not be verified because a server is currently unavailable. The revocation function was unable to check revocation because
the revocation server was offline. 0x80092013 (-2146885613).
Note: The server's computer certificate has expired and it was issued by the Domain Controller mentioned in point A. Attempts to renew it fail.
(The issue on CERT1 is like the one mentioned in this article: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/825061?wa=wsignin1.0 however an upgrade wasn't done and it's not old versions of Windows.)
c. There is a certificate authority machine - part of what was created for a PKI infrastructure - that was kept shutdown. I've powered it up and the machine is not part of the domain.
Any thoughts or feedback on easily repairing the current situation so that I can upgrade everything to a new Windows 2012 R2 Certificate infrastructure would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Hi Vadims,
    Basically using certificates in the following manner:
1. User / Computer enrollment in the AD domain.
2. Any hardware / web services (internal) that need a certificates. This is usually hardware that has some form of GUI that is accessed via URL, printers accessed via URL and/or that communicate via LDAP to AD, internal UC (Lync is an example), that
sort of thing.
    A number of machines currently show certificate errors (ie.. certificate has expired) however that hasn't stopped things from working just functioning differently. I'm going already on the assumption that if I remove the entire CA
infrastructure and re-install a new one and have everything point to that new CA server that I should be ok but I'm not 100% certain hence why I asked on this forum.
Also, you're correct is that there is one more CA. That CA was the server that was turned off/offline that I powered on. It is not part of the AD domain that the domain controller and the other CA belong to. (It is standalone.) I'm
currently patching the standalone CA since it's been off for what looks like almost 1.5 years.

802.1x machine vs user authentication

In the process of depolying 802.1x on wired LAN. What is the difference between machine authentication and user authentication? Thanks in advance.

OK, so assuming we're still talking the MSFT supplicant, you have some options:
1) USe EAP-TLS and mark any certs deployed to your corporate-owned assets and non-exportable. This solves the issue by brute force. You don't exactly need machine-authentication to do this. You may need machine-auth for other reasons (as I believe we've discussed here).
2) If PEAP is in use, use the machine-auth and the Machine-Access-Restriction feature in ACS. What this does is a coupling of the notions of machine-auth as a preceeding policy decision for user-auth. Example: It is technically possible that anyone with a valid NT account may be able to 802.1x-authenticate from "any" machine. But with the machine-access-restriction feature, they will only be able to do so if ACS has also authenticated a valid machine-auth session prior to the login attempt.
3) Use a NAR in ACS. A NAR is a Network Access Restriction. If for example, you have a database of all the MAC Addresses you have (or an OID wildcard) you can configure further checking of a MAC address from an otherwise valid 802.1x authentication attempt. This effectively tells ACS to only allow authentication attempts from MAC Addresses it knows about.
Hope this helps.

802.1x machine auth w/ certificate authority

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