We are in the midst of deploying EFS to protect specific folders on laptop hard
drives. We want EFS used only for that purpose-locally; as such, we do not
want users to have the ability to encrypt files that are residing on file
servers. According to my understanding of EFS, which seems to be confirmed by
the quote below from Windows help, users shouldn't be able to do so unless we
specifically enable file server(s) to be trusted for delegation in AD.
"In a domain environment, remote encryption is not enabled by default. To
enable encryption for a specific computer, your network administrator can make
that computer trusted for delegation. For more information, consult your
network administrator."
However, some of our servers are allowing files to be encrypted and decrypted
remotely-and these servers are *not* marked as trusted for delegation in AD.
Further, the user that encrypted the file can scoot over to another PC, log in
as themselves, and access the file-and we have no CA infrastructure in place;
these are locally-generated EFS certificates that do not chain back past the
local client machine. The certificate thumbprints in the personal store for
the user account on the two PCs do not match, yet they can access the file just
the same, while other user accounts cannot.
I'm thoroughly confused by this behavior, and would appreciate any experts
chiming in and cluing me in as to why 1) some servers are allowing remote
encryption, while others are not, and 2) why locally-generated EFS certs are
behaving this way.
Our environment:
-Windows 2000 native-mode domain
-All DCs are Win2k, file servers are a 2k/2003 mix
-Clients are 2000/XP; the OS of the client/server doesn't seem to matter-some
2k3 servers allow remote encryption, some don't, and some 2000 servers allow,
while others don't.
Thanks,
-Zack-
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