Just moments ago, you heard me mention PowerShell and LDAP. LDAP specifically. Now I'm going to hop
on over to our lab real quick. And this is our actual host when we get into the lab overall.
So as soon as you open up a depth, you click on the lab link. Here we are. This is where all the
VMs are ran. You can see them all on the right side over here as I'm highlighting them. And I
have a File Explorer window open in C Drive Windows System 32. The reason that I'm doing
this is because I want to point out that even though you can use LDAP on nearly every Windows
system out there, it does not come installed by default. And this is one of the most powerful
tools that we can use because it is possible to query an Active Directory domain with the LDAP
program and not be in the domain. You see this lab right here that we're taking a look at here
is not added to the domain. All the virtual machines within the lab are, but not this one.
And we will be doing stuff from here and going into that Active Directory environment. So if you
are on a system that does not have LDP.exe, follow me as we open up the actual server manager itself.
And then on the top right, we go into Manage, Add Roles and Features.
Now, once this opens up, you're going to get the Before You Begin screen. Just hit Next. This is
a default. And we're going to go ahead and select the actual role-based or feature-based installation
for this actual server, the top option. Matter of fact, let me zoom in for you real quick. You
can see it right there with the radio button selected, role-based or feature-based installation.
Go ahead and hit Next. We're going to make sure that Host VM is selected or the workstation or
computer that you're working on and hit Next. Now, do keep in mind, I am working on a Windows
server system. You can add this inside of the workstation version of Windows. And I'll show
you that here in a second. Now, here on this screen under Select Server Roles, we're going
to be selecting Active Directory Domain Services. And inside of here, I'm going to highlight and
then zoom in for you so you can see why we're doing this. Right there where it says ADDS and
ADLDS tools is really what we're after. Everything from there down is what we're installing or
wanting. The reason that it installs everything else is because that's a default thing, but really,
we're just here for that. And this right here installs Active Directory tools along with making
this server that we're logging into for our labs capable of running things like Active Directory
if we wanted to later on. But we're just wanting the tools for it. And this is where you get them
all. So you hit Add Features. Next. We're not worried about anything on the Select Features menu.
Next. And then go ahead and install. And then that, after we time jump here in a second, you will see
that we have LDP.exe to be able to do manual enumeration from our Windows server. We have
successfully time jumped in the future. This took about three minutes to do. And you'll notice that
it did complete. Now, I'm going to go ahead and close this and minimize. And inside of our CGI
Windows System 32 folder, you can see as I zoom in for you, we now have LDP.exe. And that's what
we were looking for. And there are many other tools that are installed on here, such as all
the snap-ins for MMC or Microsoft Management Console that you can add in and remote in if
you have the credentials and stuff. But the LDP was the most important because we're going to be
using this one a good bit. So it's good that we have that on there and that you know how to install
it. Now, let's say that you're on a workstation. This is Windows 11. And I am inside a control
panel in the Programs and Features. And on the left, I had just clicked on Turn Windows Features
on and off like I was just, let's say, installing Telnet or something like that. In this particular
case, I want to install the third option, Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services. As I
zoom in for you right there, just go ahead and check it and then hit okie-dokie. And this will
pull the files from Microsoft Update and install some of the basic tools and features that you can
get for the Active Directory Management just like you would inside of Server Manager for Windows
Server. And that'll help us as we continue throughout the rest of the skill and the next few.