Booches.nl

ISA 2006 Link Translation

Web pages returned from a Web server published by a Microsoft® Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 Web publishing rule may include links containing internal names of computers or Web sites and internal paths to Web content. Because external clients cannot resolve these internal names, these links will be broken unless the internal names are replaced by the public names of published Web sites. ISA Server includes a built-in Web filter named Link Translation Filter, which uses mappings to translate internal names in links on Web pages to publicly resolvable names. Each mapping translates an internal URL (or part of a URL) to a public equivalent. For example, a mapping can translate the internal URL http://team to the public URL https://www.team.contoso.com. Link translation mappings are stored in tables called link translation dictionaries.

Today I had a problem where the remote user wanted to request the following URL https://www.booches.nl/configuration/service.jsp. This URL isn’t allowed and needed to be redirected. ISA’s Link Translation was the solution for me. I configured the following Link Translation.

The following Link Translation rule translates the URL above in https://www.booches.nl/configuration/denied.html.

It works for me!!!

ISA 2006 Web Chaining

ISA Web Chaining rules define how traffic will be handled by the proxy server. Web request to specific destination can be handled in different ways by ISA:

1. Retrieve directly from the destination / internet;
2. Forward to an upstream proxy server;
3. Redirect the request to a specific server / web page;

The most popular use for Web Chaining is to chain branch office ISA firewalls with main office ISA firewalls. But also combining two ISP connections is a commonly used scenario for Web Chaining. I often use Web Chaining from ISA server with some kind of upstream proxy server. A lot of organizations use ISA as proxy server and some kind of dedicated appliance (maybe in DMZ environment) as content scanner.

With Web Chaining you can forward all request to the upstream proxy server, which will retrieve the specified destination from the internet. Specific website could have problems with being forwarded to the upstream server. I normally use Web Chaining to directly retrieve these website from the internet without being forwarded to the upstream proxy.

To create a Web Chaing Rule, open the ISA Management Console and navigate to Networks. In the center of the Management Console you will find a tab called Web Chaining. The default Web Chaining rule is configured to forward all request to an upstream proxy server.

The following screenshots tell you how to configure an additional Web Chaining rule to directly retrieve the destination (www.4ip.nl) from the internet.

	Start the creation of a Web Chaining rule by clicking on Task – Create new Web Chaining rule. This will start the New Web Chaining Rule Wizard. Enter a valid name for the newly created Web Chaining Rule.
	Select the destination to which this Web Chaining Rule will apply. I configured an URL set containing the URL: http://www.4ip.nl/*
	On the Request Action page, you configure how you want the Web requests to that particular destination routed by the ISA firewall. The default setting is to route the request directly to the destination Web site. This is exactly what I would like to accomplish. The last step is Finishing the New Web Chaining Rule Wizard.

The newly created Web Chaining Rule is placed above the Default Web Chaining rule in the Web Chaining tab. The rules are matched sequentially, so now all traffic matching the configured URL set will be retrieved directly from the internet. All other traffic will be forwarded to the upstream proxy server.

Active Directory: one account, two passwords

Lately I noticed something strange. I configured an ISA server as reverse proxy for OWA. The customer demanded the ability for users to change their password through OWA. I configured the OWA listener with LDAPS authentication against the Active Directory and enabled the option to select “I want to change my password after logging on” like shown below.

I tested the environment by logging in and changing the password. Everything looks okay and the password is changed correctly. I tried some extra test. I opened another browser and tried to login with the old password, which succeeded. I could now login with the old and the new password.

Strange to me…..so I tried some more test. The customer is using an SSL portal with RADIUS authentication to the same Active Director. So I tried to log in with the old and new password. I guess you know the answer. It was possible to login with both password. Another test was login in to the network components, which also use RADIUS against the Active Directory. Again the test were positive.

The last test was login in on a workstation. With this test, I could only login in with the new password and not the old one. Strange to me…… After one hour I tried again, and this time it was only possible to login with the new password.

I guess there is some kind of period where you can use both password. Maybe someone noticed this before and knows more about it…

Microsoft IAG

It has been a while since my last post, but time is short these days.

Today I had to troubleshoot a Microsoft IAG appliance. Microsoft IAG stands for Microsoft Intelligent Application Gateway. And indeed, intelligent it is. NOT. I have seen and configured multiple SSL VPN solutions like Juniper SA, Citrix Access Gateway, Citrix Secure Gateway and Cisco WebVPN. But to be honest, Microsoft IAG is the worst of all.

Microsoft IAG is installed on an appliance and is closely related to Microsoft ISA 2006, which is also installed on the server. Whenever you make some configuration changes to IAG, you have to active the new configuration inside IAG. After activating the configuration, I looked at the new ISA firewall policies and I really couldn’t believe my eyes. IAG configured ISA automatically, when activating the configuration.

A simple portal, where 2 websites and OWA are published and a network connect (SSL IP VPN), results in approximately 10 firewall policy rules in ISA. Okay, I could live with that, but I shivered while taking a closer look at the rules. It is not easy to discover what purpose a specific rule has, without looking to the different tabs while editing the rule.

Besides the crazy management of the appliance, me and a colleague had a lot of problems when testing the appliance. Currently the network connector is not supported on Windows Vista and you receive a lot of (useless) errors when using Internet Explorer 8. The logging functionality is also very basic and hard to find. I had problems with configuring and testing the network connector with the non-split tunneling and disable local area network access option, I couldn’t find any useful logging about the problem. For some reason only specific traffic is routed into the VPN tunnel. I ended up configuring split-tunneling and only route specific network segments into the SSL VPN tunnel.

My opinion till now, Microsoft IAG cannot be compared with other SSL VPN appliances I have seen. I guess Microsoft IAG could test positive when using the appliance in a solely Windows environment, where only Windows services, like OWA and SharePoint, are published to the internet.

Maybe the solution is a lot cheaper compared with the Juniper and Citrix solution, but for know I would rather buy a Cisco ASA 5505 or Cisco ASA 5510. I would definitely not configure the Microsoft IAG as a cooperate firewall terminating the Internet connection.

Where is the Internet Authentication Service?

Microsoft IAS server is often used as RADIUS server to authenticate VPN users or in conjunction with ISA reverse proxy to authenticate OWA users or PDA synchronization.

Today I had to install an ISA reverse proxy server with ISA 2006 Standard and Exchange 2007. I wanted to install Microsoft IAS as RADIUS server to authenticate the OWA users. Normally I install IAS on one, but preferably, on two domain controllers. I logged in on a domain controller through RDP. I noticed that the OS of the domain controller was Windows Server 2008.

Cool, finally working with a Windows Server 2008. After getting familiarized with the new view and layout, I started to search for a way to add the needed Windows component IAS. After searching for a while I found how to add Windows component. Looking at the complete list, I couldn’t find the Internet Authentication Service.

Oops, did Microsoft remove the IAS functionality from its server platform??? After googling for a second, I found that IAS has been replaced by Network Policy and Access Server service in Windows 2008.

Microsoft TechNet told me the following:

Network Policy Server (NPS) is the Microsoft implementation of a Remote Authentication Dial-in User Service (RADIUS) server and proxy in Windows Server 2008. NPS is the replacement for Internet Authentication Service (IAS) in Windows Server 2003.

 

As a RADIUS server, NPS performs centralized connection authentication, authorization, and accounting for many types of network access, including wireless and virtual private network (VPN) connections. As a RADIUS proxy, NPS forwards authentication and accounting messages to other RADIUS servers. NPS also acts as a health evaluation server for Network Access Protection (NAP). Source

After installing NPS, I started the configuration. You really have to get familiar with the way Windows Server 2008 works. There are a lot of different wizard and multiple configuration options to choose from. Everything looks a bit more fancy. NPS is not only a replacement for IAS, but has also many enhancements.

More information about installing and configuration Network Policy Server can be found in the article Understanding the new Windows Server 2008 Network Policy Server on WindowsNetworking.com. Here you can read that NPS has a lot of functions related to Network Access Protocol (NAP). A very detailed example of using NPS to perform NAP can be found in Brian Posey’s series An Introduction to Network Access Protoction.