PowerShell script to collect ADFS Extranet Smart Lockout events sequence

Below is slightly modified script from here to collect the sequence of the EventIDs 1203 and 1210 on single AD FS server that might help you understanding and troubleshooting the AD FS Extranet Smart Lockout (ESL) behavior. You can read more about AD FS ESL behavior here and here.

AD FS 2016 Extranet Smart Lockout eventIDs 1203 and 1210 clarification

Continuing my journey of learning the great AD FS Extranet Smart Lockout (ESL) feature. As mentioned in my other post, the enhancement were made in AD FS 2016 auditing and there will be Event ID 1203 logged in the ADFS Security log by ADFS Auditing in case there was a failure to validate user credentials …

AD FS Extranet Smart Lockout user management via remote PowerShell

Recently had experienced issue when trying to execute AD FS Extranet Smart Lockout user management cmdlet via remote PowerShell. Error in PowerShell: Exception of type 'Microsoft.IdentityServer.User.UserActivityRestServiceException' was thrown. + CategoryInfo         : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AdfsAccountActivity], User ActivityRestServiceException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.IdentityServer.User.UserActivityRestSer viceException,Microsoft.IdentityServer.Management.Commands.GetAdfsAccountAc tivity + PSComputerName       : Win2016-ADFS01 In AD FS Admin logs on Win2016-ADFS01 server saw …

AD FS 2016 Extranet Smart Lockout behavior

I’m sure you are familiar with the following articles discussing the Federated account lockouts and AD FS Extranet Smart Lockout (ESL) feature and set up recommendations. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/tspring/2017/01/20/federated-to-microsoft-cloud-and-account-lockouts/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-fs/operations/configure-ad-fs-extranet-smart-lockout-protection https://samilamppu.com/2018/07/09/w2016-adfs-smart-lockout/ Recently was helping the customer whose environment was experiencing high volume of on-premises AD accounts lockouts due to the external bad passwords attempts via AD FS …

PowerShell script to collect AD FS 2016 bad password sign in attempts data

There is an excellent blogpost about federated to Microsoft Cloud accounts lockouts data collection, analysis and mitigation.  The article above provides links to the scripts collecting event logs data for Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012 R2. But in Windows Server 2016 there were audit enhancements made in AD FS 2016 auditing to make …

Discover and protect from crypto miners in your network using pfSense firewall

In a raise of popularity of crypto mining there is a shift in the threat landscape. Attackers “are beginning to recognize that they can realize all the financial upside of previous attacks, like ransomware, without needing to actually engage the victim and without the extraneous law enforcement attention that comes with ransomware attacks,” Talos researchers …