Security Basics mailing list archives

Re: File Permission Audit Tool - Windows


From: Big Joe Jenkins <swarzkopf () legolas sinnerz us>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:49:24 -0400 (EDT)

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer does a nice job of summarizing permissions set on our shared folders on whatever system you run it against.

This won't help with non-shared folders, but it may be a good start.


On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, krymson () gmail com wrote:

I wish I could give you an easy open source/free tool, but I can't. Hopefully someone else can so I can also use it. :)

In case you do talk to some vendors, the biggest problem with reporting permissions is dealing with duplicates. Tools 
like xcacls will report every single object or folder, whether it is inherited or different from its parent. You really 
want to eliminate all that garbage and only report explicit permissions, with the assumption that inheritance is 
otherwise present downstream. Almost an exception report.


1) Free, but nearly useless
You could use cacls/xcacls, but the output you get will be next to useless.

2) Free, but a little effort
Windows PowerShell allows for some excellent scripting of permissions audits and other such stuff. If you know PS, you 
should use this as it affords you a lot of customizable power.

3) Commercial, but very cool
I really enjoyed my trials of ScriptLogic's Enterprise Security Reporter [1] a year ago. You can get some nice reports 
on permissions

[1] http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/enterprisesecurityreporter/

<- snip ->
I am looking for audit tool that will give me a report on all the file permission on a windows 2000/2003 servers. I 
will prefer open source but would be willing to look at commercial software if it is superior.



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