Setting up SSL in Active Directory how-to

Question

I need to set up SSL over Active Directory. I googled a lot but could not found a decent write up about how to do this. Please if you know some good resources about this let me know. Thanks!

Answer 1

Can you be more specific. What is the client trying to do? Active directory support ldap over ssl by default. There is nothing that should be done to activate it. It is done in port 636/tcp. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727063.aspx

Answer 2

The absolute fastest way to install SSL into AD is to load MS certificate services. Once this is installed, all domain controllers will request a new certificate automatically and update themselves...

Answer 3

Sounds easy - but I ran into quite a few problems getting trusted connections with SSL working in our environment. The article was about ADAM but is just as applicable for AD. In our environment I couldn't install domain-related services like cert-server, nor act as domain-admin.

I blogged about how I got this working a while back

http://stephbu.wordpress.com/2006/11/29/using-adam-with-asp-net-2-0-activedirectorymembershipprovider/

Dan and Erlend's postings were invaluable.

Took some backflips to get it done.

Answer 4

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is used to read from and write to Active Directory. By default, LDAP traffic is transmitted unsecured. You can make LDAP traffic confidential and secure by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) / Transport Layer Security (TLS) technology. You can enable LDAP over SSL (LDAPS) by installing a properly formatted certificate from either a Microsoft certification authority (CA) or a non-Microsoft CA according to the guidelines in this article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321051