Windows active directory account locked

The final password attempt on client "WS01" is a password among the 2 most recent in password history, so neither badPwdCount nor badPasswordTime is updated. Next, the bad password attempts switch to client "WS02", which is connected to "DC02". The first login attempt on this client is again a password among the 2 most recent in history, so nothing is updated. Since lockoutObservationWindow was not exceeded, the account is locked out. The next two logon attempts after the account are locked do not update any of the attributes.

The final logon attempt in the table succeeds because the lockoutDuration has expired. One conclusion is that lockoutObservationWindow is the maximum amount of time between bad password attempts that update badPasswordTime before badPwdCount will reset. Then badPasswordTime on the DC is updated to the current time. Typical results are in the table below.

The first bad password attempt above was handled by DC02 since the workstation was connected to that domain controller. The value of the LogonServer environment variable was "DC02".

Apparently, the request instead got forwarded to DC01, after a slight timeout delay. For some reason, the badPwdCount got incremented a second time on DC No documentation could be found for this behavior. The next bad password attempt looks as if it was handled by DC01 because only the Count and Time on that DC was updated. It is almost as if the LogonServer switched to DC01 during the first password attempt.

The third bad password matches the most recent password for this user in password history, so the login attempt is rejected but nothing is updated on either DC. The fourth bad password attempt, with elapsed time since the previous badPasswordTime, causes the count on DC01 to increment by one, but the count on DC02 increments to 5. At this point, the account is locked out.

But the next bad password attempt results in no updates on any of the domain controllers since the account is locked. The final password attempt, after another hour has gone by, succeeds because the lockoutDuration has passed and the password is finally correct.

The badPwdCount resets on all of the DC's, as expected. Notice that DC03 never got updated in this case with any bad password information. Also, the user actually only got 3 tries with bad passwords, other than the one in recent password history, before getting locked out. Several similar tests were conducted with the PDCe unavailable. In all cases, badPwdCount sometimes increased by more than one after a bad password attempt. This feature helps reduce account lockouts and support calls to the help desk from regular users.

However, it could reveal useful information to a potential attacker. A knowledgeable person doing a dictionary attack could monitor the value of badPwdCount on the authenticating DC after each attempt. Such a person would be able to tell if an attempted password was among the two most recent in password history.

This would not allow the attacker to compromise the account immediately. But it would provide useful information. First, knowledge of past passwords can give hints about how the user constructs their passwords. Second, the attacker can assume the user will probably reuse an old password eventually. Even assuming the information can be used by the attacker, the effect is that three passwords are being attacked rather than just one.

The odds of identifying any of the three are only improved by a factor of 3 at most. As long as passwords are long and complex, this is not a bad trade-off. Instead of an attack taking 3 years, it may take but one. Also, this is only useful to someone with an existing account in the domain. If account lockout is configured the attacker needs to greatly reduce the number of attempts per minute, or risk lockouts. The role of the PDC Emulator is the most critical for users.

It is used for bad password attempts and password changes. The PDC Emulator in each domain serves as the primary time source for all computers in the domain, while the PDC Emulator in the forest root domain is the primary time source for the forest. As such, the following is recommended. There is always a tradeoff between security and convenience. Nice, we also use the sysinternals Account Lockout Status tool, shows what DC a users lockout occurred on. Helps to track down where a user may have a saved password.

The timing on this is great. We have one account that is getting locked out multiple times a day. The user will be so happy! We have lot of user connected to employee WiFi or have there work e-mails connected to there phone, A lot of them forgot to update them causing the account to lockout so find it that way.

You can also set up email notifications for when the account locks and unlocks as well as remote unlock by replying to the designated email address with a specific pass code. Still working on the remote unlock. Pretty cool tool, I use it every day. This would had been useful yesterday.

I had someone text me and a bunch of other people that a user was being locked out for no apparent reason. I also have a user that was getting locked out.

It was due to an old phone that was not in use but when he turned it on it tried to sync. I removed it from Active sync. Mobile devices are our most frequent cause. The users tell us directly,when they're locked out. And of course they think it is something we did to their account.

I'm sorry but I must be missing something, the article only appears to demonstrate how to find out if the user account is locked out not the actual source of the lockout. Hi everyone. My account is getting locked out and I'm trying to track it down We have blank CallerComputerName entries too and it's normally from a non-Windows device. Here, we have Mac users that map to shares with AD creds. Thanks Jamie!! The Search-ADAccount cmdlet allows you to display information about all locked accounts in a domain:.

But in some cases, the locking of the accounts takes place without any apparent reason. In such a situation users report that did nothing and were never entering the wrong password, but their account for some reason is locked. The administrator can manually remove the lock at the request of the user, but after a while, the situation repeats. Start the Group Policy Management Console gpmc.

Enable the checkboxes: Define these policy settings , Audit these attempts: Success and Failure. Save the changes in the GPO. You need to look for domain account lockout events on the PDC domain controller. Right-click the Security item and select Filter Current Log. You will see a list of events when locking domain user accounts on this DC took place with an event message A user account was locked out.

Find the last entry in the log containing the name of the desired user in the Account Name value. The name of the computer from which the lock was made is specified in the Caller Computer Name value. Use the following code to list the last account lockout events on the DC:. You can find the sources of lockout events for a specific user in the last 2 days using the command:. Most often, the account lock begins after the user has changed the domain password.